Quick Summary of Chio-Chio-San
- 🌍 Origin: A highly popular commercial Russian variety, officially registered in the Russian State Register of Breeding Achievements.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), though some growers successfully prune it into a multi-stem determinate bush. As seedlings, the plants often look weak or “wispy,” which is normal, but they explode with vigor once planted.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Small, pink, plum/oval-shaped fruits weighing about 30–50 g (1–1.7 oz). The standout feature is its multiflora habit—it produces massive, highly complex trusses (clusters) holding dozens of tomatoes. Trusses require heavy support. The skin is quite thin.
- 👅 Flavor: Reviews are mixed depending on weather and region. In good conditions, it is described as “sweet like candy” with a fruity profile. In rainy/cold years, it leans toward an ordinary, slightly acidic tomato flavor.
- ⏳ Maturity: Mid-late to late season. A true workhorse for late summer and autumn harvests. Excellent for canning, though the thin skin makes it prone to cracking in jars.
Very productive, tasty, aromatic, and sweet. 👍
I’ve been testing this variety for 3 years now. This year I planted only one bush just for beauty, and it ended up catching Late Blight. Over these years, the taste has never exceeded the “average” mark; I would confidently rate it below average, zero points. It doesn’t impress or attract me in terms of flavor. Plus, it is absolutely not firm—if you squeeze it, it drips.
For me too, its leaves were the very first to get sick. I repeated growing it only because I wanted to remember what I planted a very long time ago.
But I really liked this variety! Yummy! The tomatoes are sweet, sweet like candy. And there are so, so many of them! Didn’t get sick with anything. I will definitely plant it next year.
It probably just feels very good here in the Krasnodar Region! 😉
I planted Chio-Chio-San in 2012. The bush was completely loaded with fruit, grew outdoors in open ground. The taste was a B minus (4 out of 5). 😞
The bush is beautiful, very tall, picturesque, but the fruit taste is a B minus, I agree with Elena. I don’t like the taste of all tomatoes, I am a fussy eater. Maybe that’s why you shouldn’t rely solely on my opinion. 😳
I liked Chio-Chio-San. There are sweeter tomatoes out there, but this one is not bad either. The only thing is, if it’s even slightly overripe, it cracks when you pull it from the stem, and it doesn’t store for a long time.
I also planted Chio-Chio-San for the first time this year (by the way, it was my first time ever planting tomatoes). I fell in love with it! It was the only tomato that stoically withstood my barbaric gardening care, and despite even getting Late Blight, it pleased me with tasty tomatoes and a good yield. 😘
Planted it for the first year, liked it. It turned out firm, tasty, average yield. One minus – the fruits cracked.
I liked it, and the kids liked it even more!)
When I planted this variety, the seedlings were very wispy compared to others. And suddenly, in the greenhouse, it came to life and rushed upwards. I even had to run it along a trellis horizontally. I liked its sugary taste. On the break, the flesh looks like sugar crystals. It doesn’t store well. For canning, I harvested them at the breaker stage (turning brown), and then it was amazing for winter preserves.
One of my favorite varieties. I’ve been planting it for a long time and every single year. It performs worse in the greenhouse for me; a lot of flowers dry up and drop off. It is a late-season variety. You need to prune it to 1 stem.
Taste: It usually ripens late, so everyone picks it out of my September tomato boxes, along with a few other small varieties. For me, it has a very balanced flavor in the autumn. But in the summer, you can’t taste it, because it’s still hanging green. 😄 😄
Here is mine.
I like the taste and yield; it has always grown in the greenhouse for me.
It is problematic for me to tie up these heavy trusses, here is a photo of a broken one. 😞
And also, I don’t understand why there are sometimes dark spots on the fruits, but it happens to me every year.
Second year planting it. I have to limit its growth and thin out the number of trusses.
This is outdoors on July 29, 2016. Tender, tasty 30-50g (1-1.7 oz) plums, but this year the sugar content let us down, just like on many other varieties.
The average yield outdoors this year was 2.9 kg (6.4 lbs) per plant.
In the greenhouse, the record was 8.5 kg (18.7 lbs), but they got “yellow shoulders” due to the heat.
I found a description of this variety and got really upset. 😢 I always thought it was an open-pollinated variety (heirloom), but it turned out to be an F1 Hybrid. I wanted to save seeds from it this year. Those who grew it – how is it with seeds? Do you buy them or can you use your own? Does it segregate/mutate?
Quote from Grabelka:
I found a description of this variety and got really upset. 😢 I always thought it was an open-pollinated variety, but it turned out to be an F1 Hybrid… Does it segregate/mutate?
It is a variety (open-pollinated), not a hybrid.
Thank you. Did you collect seeds yourself, and what grew out of them? Maybe I should test it myself.
Quote from Grabelka:
Thank you. Did you collect seeds yourself, and what grew out of them? Maybe I should test it myself.
I collected them. It grows true to type as Chio-Chio-San. 🎩 (Hats off!)
Quote from Grabelka:
I found a description of this variety and got really upset. 😢 I always thought it was an open-pollinated variety, but it turned out to be a Hybrid…
You shouldn’t believe everything they write online, especially when it’s poorly phrased (“hybrid variety”). According to the official State Register of Breeding Achievements, Chio-Chio-San is registered as an OP VARIETY.
A big thank you to everyone who dispelled my doubts. 🌺 As for believing what’s online – it’s tricky… 😳 Better to ask experienced growers so as not to end up in a mess. It’s just that this year I sowed my last 4 seeds from a store-bought packet. That’s why the question arose about saving my own planting material. 🌺
I’ll show you my little Chio-San. I’m growing it this year from my own saved seeds, and it turned out much more productive than last year (they had sparse clusters then) when planted from a commercial Gavrish packet. This year it shot up to the greenhouse ceiling and sets fruit endlessly. I don’t remember exactly when I sowed it, but in the first ten days of March. It went into the greenhouse in mid-May. It will stay on my permanent grow list. The two bottom trusses have long been harvested and eaten. 👍
Valentina, did you prune it to one stem?
Mine outdoors in open ground is not super loaded. Height is 1.5m (5 ft). Fruits are still green.
Tanya, I lost count… how many stems grew out of there! 😄 At first, as expected, I led it into two stems, the clusters were huge, and I thought it wouldn’t be able to carry them. But it is so vigorous! So I decided to leave the largest suckers. So there are definitely at least 4 stems there. I don’t grow outdoors in the garden. Maybe mine would have been modest like yours if I did.
A wonderful variety with huge multiflora clusters of pink, tasty oval fruits weighing about 30 grams (1 oz). Grew in a greenhouse, led in 1 stem, after the 4th cluster I topped the main stem.
A long time ago, acquaintances gave me seeds of the ‘Butterfly’ variety. I thought it was the same thing as Chio-Chio-San, but this year I saw both varieties in the State Register. According to the description and reviews by amateurs, I didn’t see a difference in these varieties. The taste and yield are excellent; every truss must be suspended/tied up in at least 3 places.
This variety sets fruit, unlike Yubileyny Tarasenko, on practically 100% of the flowers in the cluster.
The taste is ordinary, tomatoey, without frills. With a predominance of acidity. But so far, for the abundance and beauty of the trusses, there is no replacement for it.
I’ve been growing it for three years; I like to use it for canning. Very beautiful clusters.
Outdoors, it is entirely covered with fruits. In the greenhouse, it sets worse, and this happens every year. What is the reason?
+ Loaded with fruit, taste of an ordinary sweet pink tomato.
– It cracks, although it doesn’t rot or spoil. I don’t like small tomatoes, but…
++ It ripens perfectly off the vine (from green) on an upside-down suspended stem (roots cut off) without losing taste or appearance. It grew outdoors and hung on a nail in a cold room for about a month.
Because of this, I decided to plant one bush, but Chio-Chio-San turned out to be sneakier, I ended up with two)). Question: has anyone tried making sun-dried tomatoes with it?
I liked my Chio-Chio so much… and everyone who tried it noted its fruity flavor. Really something sweet and fruity. At first, the seedling was wispy/weak, then it came to life and tied 4 clusters, and now there are still a lot of small ones at the top. Along with Barry’s Crazy Cherry… it’s my favorite among the small ones.
When canning in jars, about 20% of the fruits crack during the double hot water pour.
I close them in jars with screw caps. And not by the hot method, but with cold pouring. They store beautifully, without cracking. True, they are very small…
Quote from Valentina:
I close them in jars with screw caps. And not by the hot method, but with cold pouring. They store beautifully, without cracking. True, they are very small…
This is interesting! Can you give more details in the culinary section?
And I now plant Chio using a determinate training method.
I pinch/top it at a height of about 1m (3 ft), but I lead it into 7-9 stems. The number of clusters, and the fruits in them, have to be strictly thinned out.
But even then you can’t guess; this year summer ended on July 1st, and a mountain of small fruits from two bushes didn’t have time to ripen.
Although the total yield from the bush was still normal – 4.6 kg (10 lbs).
Has anyone planted the orange Chio-Chio-San from Gavrish? Judging by the description, it only remotely resembles the classic.
And the clusters aren’t as abundant, and the shape is not a plum, but a pear.
I’m going to try them in 2020.
Quote from grawicapa:
Has anyone planted the orange Chio-Chio-San from Gavrish? Judging by the description, it only remotely resembles the classic.
A long time ago, I ordered “Raspberry Sugar Plum” from SeDek. They poured seeds into the packet generously back then. And I grew 2 types of plums – raspberry-pink and orange. They looked more like mini-pears rather than plums. I really liked the orange ones, sweet and they didn’t crack, I often repeat them, but the raspberry-pink ones cracked mercilessly, and the taste was ordinary.
This year I planted Chio-Chio-San, dreaming that it would grow into exactly a small plum, like the girls have in the photos, but the tomatoes grew identical to the Raspberry Sugar Plum, and they cracked just as terribly!
I wonder, did I get the wrong Chio-Chio-San, or is it the exact same variety as Raspberry Sugar Plum?!
Yes, Chio-Chio-San has a very delicate skin, but for example, I like it when a crack appears on a tomato in a marinade or pickle, because then they fully absorb the flavor from the brine.
Quote from grawicapa:
Yes, Chio-Chio-San has a very delicate skin, but for example, I like it when a crack appears on a tomato in a marinade or pickle, because then they fully absorb the flavor from the brine.
I thought I was the only one who picks out the cracked tomatoes!))
Quote from Nadezhda 69:
I wonder, did I get the wrong Chio-Chio-San, or is it the exact same variety as Raspberry Sugar Plum?!
Dear Nadezhda, Chio-Chio-San looks similar to Raspberry Sugar Plum outwardly, I agree. I grew that plum for several years and was very satisfied. Unfortunately, the collected seeds got lost, and I tried to replace it with the Chio-Chio-San tomato. No, it is not the same at all. I have been looking for Raspberry Sugar Plum for three years, but they are not available in Ukraine. It was listed on the website of one online store, but, as it turned out, they only have the yellow one. So I continue my search. Wishing you good harvests.
A very beautiful, abundant tomato.
