Heirloom Tomato Varieties & Reviews | Tomat-Pomidor
Honest reviews of global tomato varieties from a 15-year-old growers community.
🍅 Quick take: Moneymaker is a classic indeterminate, mid-season English heirloom (introduced by F. Stonor of Southampton around 1913) known for heavy trusses of uniform, medium-sized red tomatoes. Growers praise its hybrid-like reliability, strong disease and weather resistance, and balanced sweet-tangy flavor that works equally well for fresh slicing and whole-fruit pickling. Full summary ↓ … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Lehrertomate (German for “Teacher’s Tomato”) is a traditional German indeterminate heirloom bred for producing massive, scarlet-red beefsteaks tipping the scales between 14-25 oz (400-700 g). The fruit are dense, meaty, and lightly ribbed with remarkably few seeds and a rich, old-fashioned balanced flavor. While it sets fruit reliably in cool northern summers, … Read more
🍅 Quick take: La-chan-y-ha is a compact, determinate bush paste tomato of Chinese origin, highly valued in cold Siberian regions for its reliability. Plants stay under 32 inches (80 cm) tall while pumping out dense clusters of elongated scarlet plums measuring up to 3 inches (8 cm) long. Unlike many rubbery commercial processing types, the … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Herztomate Riehen is an indeterminate, mid-season red oxheart known for its classic wispy foliage and meaty, medium-to-large fruits. Growers report a nicely balanced, sweet flavor that makes it a perfect slicer for fresh eating. While outdoor yields might be just average, greenhouse growers have seen solid, above-average harvests. Full summary ↓ Growers’ … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Grosse Hative d’Orleans Bush is a semi-determinate, early-season red variety known for its sparse foliage and highly concentrated harvest. Growers appreciate it as a low-maintenance outdoor plant that delivers above-average yields of very juicy, seed-dense fruits. While the flavor is a basic, classic tomato taste, it is considered very good for such … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Great Divide is an indeterminate red beefsteak that produces juicy, oblate fruits with an excellent, sweet flavor. Growers highlight its thin skin and high seed count, noting that it performs very well outdoors and delivers solid yields. While some seed catalogs boast sizes up to 21 oz (600 g), everyday garden results … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Grandfather Ashlock is a mid-season, indeterminate heirloom. It’s an old Ashlock family heirloom from Kentucky. The true variety features potato leaf foliage and produces large, highly uniform, oblate pink beefsteaks. Growers praise its outstanding, sweet, and tender flavor. Keep an eye out for regular leaf off-types in seed batches, which tend to … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Grosse Serge is an indeterminate, mid-season red beefsteak known for producing incredibly massive, hefty fruits. Growers rave about its perfectly balanced, sweet flavor and very meaty, deep-oblate fruits that contain almost no seeds. While yields are generally solid despite the sheer size of the tomatoes, the exceptional taste and long harvest window … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Diplom is an early-season determinate (bush) variety. Commercial seeds are sold as an F1 hybrid known for reliable, continuous yields of uniform 3.2 oz (90 g) fruits that keep very well in storage. However, growers saving seeds from this variety have ended up with a dehybridized strain that exhibits different traits, such … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Delicious is a classic indeterminate, mid-season heirloom known for producing massive, meaty red beefsteaks. In this thread, growers also discuss “Deliciosus”—often just the Eastern European phonetic spelling of the same variety, though seed lines vary significantly. Growers praise its outstanding, sweet flavor and high yields. The tall vines produce huge fruits that … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Diamante Oppedisano is an indeterminate, mid-season variety known for producing large to giant, meaty beefsteaks. The plants are vigorous, growing up to 6.5 ft (2 m) tall, and the yields are exceptionally heavy, with huge tomatoes growing in clusters. The flavor is described as good, classic tomato flavor. There is some debate … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Ozaltin is an indeterminate cocktail-sized tomato bred specifically as a “long-keeper” (storage tomato). It produces extremely dense, glossy red fruits weighing 1 to 2 oz (30-60 g). The plants are highly productive, well-behaved vines that set uniform clusters. While most storage tomatoes are notorious for tasting like cardboard, Ozaltin actually retains a … Read more