Heirloom Tomato Varieties & Reviews | Tomat-Pomidor
Honest reviews of global tomato varieties from a 15-year-old growers community.
🍅 Quick take: Oslinye Ushi (Donkey Ears) is a mid-season, indeterminate pink/raspberry elongated plum tomato. Known for its classic oxheart-style wispy, drooping foliage, the vine produces large, meaty, and sweet fruits weighing up to 14 oz (400 g). While most growers praise it as a highly productive workhorse with excellent flavor, it requires consistent watering … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Nina is an incredibly striking, heavily ribbed red tomato that thrives in the greenhouse. A highly productive indeterminate vine, it yields massive fruits up to 1.1 lbs with a classic, old-fashioned tomato flavor. Perfect as a show-stopping centerpiece or sliced thick for salads. Full summary ↓ Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zone … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Apple Malinovka (Malinovka Yablochnaya) is a stout, highly productive indeterminate Russian heirloom that produces beautiful, oblate, deep pink beefsteaks. Known for its thick stems and manageable height, it typically pumps out meaty 5.5-10.5 oz (150-300 g) fruits with a rich, buttery texture and sweet flavor. Because the name “Malinovka” is often used … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Millioner (Millionaire) is a large, indeterminate beefsteak tomato traced back to Missouri in the 1950s. While some seed sellers have spun wild marketing tales about it, the true variety produces massive, smooth, pinkish-coral fruits weighing 10.5-28 oz (300-800 g). Growers praise its sweet, meaty-yet-juicy texture and excellent late-season keeping qualities. However, this … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Matrena is a tall, mid-early indeterminate tomato that produces large, ribbed red pears. Known for incredible yields and a dense, meaty texture with very few seeds, it is often compared to the popular Puzata Khata variety. Growers praise its robust health, immunity to blossom end rot (BER), and ability to set fruit … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Sea Star is a heavily ribbed, highly productive indeterminate variety that acts like a miniature version of “American Ribbed.” While it puts out a massive yield of beautiful, toy-like 5 oz (140 g) fruits, growers note the flavor is strictly average and the flesh tends to be dry, making it better suited … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Raspberry Rhapsody (Malinovaya Rapsodiya) is an excellent compact (semi-determinate) variety from the Russian seed company Aelita. It stays short—around 2.5 ft (80 cm) in a greenhouse—but produces impressive yields of beautiful, medium-to-large pink beefsteaks averaging 7-10.5 oz (200-300g). It is highly disease-resistant, starts producing early for its size class, and delivers a … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Montserrat is a traditional Catalan heirloom famous for being a “stuffer” tomato. It produces highly vigorous, sprawling indeterminate vines that yield heavily ribbed, hollow fruits. Because the structural walls are thick and lack the juicy gel of a standard slicer, it is considered a culinary/special-purpose tomato—perfect for scooping out and baking, but … Read more
The TL;DR: Peppermint is a stunning mid-season bicolor heirloom (yellow/orange with red marbling and stripes). Vines are generally Indeterminate to semi-determinate; well-behaved and sparse on suckers, reaching 5-7.5 ft (1.5-2.3m) depending on greenhouse or outdoor conditions. Yields are typically average, but the fruits are massive (14-24 oz) and visually gorgeous. The flavor profile is deeply … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Malinovy Rassvet (Raspberry Dawn) is a mid-season, indeterminate oxheart tomato from the seed company Poisk. It produces massive, smooth, meaty fruits that easily exceed 14 oz (400 g). The flavor is highly rated as sweet and aromatic, though the color may lean more toward red than a true pink or raspberry hue. … Read more
At a Glance: Meat Breakfast Tomato (Myasnoy Zavtrak) 🍅 Quick take: Myasnoy Zavtrak (Meat Breakfast) is a mid-season, indeterminate orange beefsteak variety. It produces massive, oblate, meaty fruits that can reach over 2 lbs (1 kg). Growers praise its phenomenal sweet flavor and vigorous vines, though experiences with yield and storage shelf life are somewhat … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Mikado Rozovyi (Pink Mikado) is an early-season indeterminate pink beefsteak that is heavily debated regarding its foliage. True Russian growers insist it must have a potato leaf (PL). It produces sweet, meaty, flat-round fruits ranging from 8 oz to a solid 2 lbs (250-900 g) and performs exceptionally well both in the … Read more