📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Big Girl (Большая девочка)
- 🌍 Origin: Often circulated among Russian and Ukrainian collectors under the name “Bolshaya Devochka” (Big Girl) or sometimes incorrectly as “Bonnie Magnificent”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. Outdoors it stays relatively compact (around 3 ft / 1 m), but in a greenhouse, it easily reaches 5.5 ft (1.7 m) or more. Extremely disease-resistant and healthy-looking bush.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large, blocky, highly ribbed red tomatoes with a somewhat cylindrical/blocky shape. Weights usually range from 10 to 18 oz (300-500g). Inside, they are semi-hollow (Stuffer type), with thick, dense walls and very little gel or seeds.
- 👅 Flavor: Highly debated! Because of its hollow, dry nature, many find it completely bland, watery, or tasteless when eaten fresh. However, its low acidity and firm walls make it absolutely perfect for sun-drying or stuffing.
- ⏳ Yield & Growing Traits: A late-season ripener. It is extremely prolific. Pro Tip: It is a heavy feeder! It requires a lot of potassium to fully ripen the core and avoid hard green fibers inside the flesh.
I liked this variety for its taste, it’s very, very sweet, and the fruit shape is interesting too, kind of like a cylinder. Despite claims of up to 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs), my fruits only weighed up to 10.5 oz (300g). But I think because I got a late start (late sowing), it just didn’t have time to show its true potential; there were a lot of small fruits that just didn’t have time to grow.
It’s advertised as a very heavy yielder, but even with the yield I got, it is worth planting just for the taste.
Sasha, could you please write down the bush height and where it’s better to plant it — outdoors in open ground or in a greenhouse? 😳
The stated bush height is 5 ft (1.5 meters), but then again, outdoors for me it was only about 3 ft (1 meter). In a greenhouse, if pruned to 1-2 stems, I think it would definitely exceed 5 ft. Large-fruited varieties almost always perform better in greenhouses, and the taste is usually better too, unless you live in the deep South. Although this variety had excellent taste even in open ground.
Alexander, who were your seeds from? I looked at V. Redko’s description, and it says the fruit weight is 300-400 g (10-14 oz). Did yours really claim up to 1.5 kg?
The seeds were from Ukraine; almost all collectors there have it. In some places, it goes by the name “Bonnie Magnificent”, although that’s probably not entirely correct and they might be different varieties. The claimed weight varies wildly depending on who you ask — some say 1 kg (2.2 lbs) and more, but I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, around 500g (1 lb max), though it probably depends heavily on where and how you grow it.
Edited December 12, 2013 by Sandr
Sasha, is it an all-purpose tomato? Good for both salads and canning?
I think it’s more of a slicing/salad tomato. The fruits are large, so for canning, you could only use them chopped. Sliced up, I think it would be fantastic in canned tomato salads. I really loved its taste.
Big Girl was a failure for me this year.
Let’s just say — it was probably the most interesting tomato externally, in terms of shape and mass. And the absolute least interesting — internally.
Indet. Grew to 2 stems. Started ripening later than most others; it’s a late-season variety.
Fruits had an interesting shape, they were both elongated and somewhat oblate, maintaining a slightly asymmetrical ribbing on all fruits. There were 4-sided, 3-sided, and 5-sided fruits.
But the taste was disappointing — out of all the varieties I grew this year, it was the most watery. But the wateriness was somewhat sweet; there was absolutely no acidity in the flavor! Also, it clearly suffered from a lack of potassium. All my other plants had enough, but these tomatoes did not! Even though I applied a generous amount of wood ash before planting. Basically, halfway through the fruit, there were hard green fibers (a green core).
I will probably try it one more time; I just need to give it more attention and feed it better so it ripens properly, then maybe the taste will improve.
The one in the photo above is far from the largest; I was just too lazy to take a picture of it on the scale 😞
Here is what they look like inside. Closer to the blossom end, of course, the green fibrous core disappeared.
I grew Big Girl in 2013. Seeds were from N.N. Titova in Moscow. The variety is definitely more suited for sun-drying. My daughter really loved it. Beautiful fruits, ribbed, very glossy. But inside, they are almost like hollow stuffers. I knock on them: knock-knock-knock, and it sounds completely empty inside… 😄. I probably underfed them too 🤔. Or more likely, they were waterlogged. They got flooded that year, we had torrential rains, we were practically drowning.
Edited November 26, 2014 by Ovechka
In the greenhouse, the variety turned out to be very prolific. The fruits were sweet, very meaty, with hollow cavities. Bush height was approximately 5.5 ft (1.7 meters).
That means they are perfect for sun-drying.
I agree with everyone. I grew this variety under the name Bonnie Magnificent (it’s the exact same thing). The bush was completely disease-free, prolific, threw out these awesome giant bombs, mid-to-late season. I picked all of them green to ripen indoors. A bit dry inside. But aesthetically, it’s a very pleasing shape.
The fruits are large, very uniform. The plate in the photo is 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter. The taste is mediocre, but I’m keeping it in my collection.
My Big Girl popped up with variegated foliage. Can that happen?
