📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Dieticheskiy Zdorovyak (Dietary Big Guy)
- 🌍 Origin: A commercial variety from Siberian Garden (SibSad). The name translates to “Dietary Big Guy”, referencing both its massive fruit size and its orange color (which in Russia is often marketed as “dietary” or hypoallergenic).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Determinate (bush). Reaches about 3 feet (1 m) outdoors and up to 4-5 feet (1.2-1.5 m) in a greenhouse. Very sturdy, stocky plants that are easy to manage in the seedling stage.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Matte-orange, perfectly round/oblate tomatoes. If left unpruned, they average 5-9 oz (150-250 g). If you thin the fruit clusters, they can easily reach 14-17 oz (400-500 g). The flesh is very firm, dense, and meaty, not watery at all.
- 👅 Flavor: Surprisingly delicious and sweet for a determinate variety. Great for fresh eating, but its firm texture makes it perfect for canning in chunks or wedges.
- ⚠️ Grower Notes: Sets fruit trusses very close together (every 1-2 leaves). To get massive fruits, you must practice cluster thinning (removing some blossoms to leave only 3-4 tomatoes per truss).
From Siberian Garden. The packet claims: Mid-early, determinate variety. Fruits weigh 10.5-17 oz (300-500 g). Grows up to 5 ft (1.5 m) in the greenhouse, up to 3 ft (1 m) outdoors. Yield is 11 lbs (5 kg) per plant. It sets trusses low on the plant and very frequently, with 4-5 fruits per cluster.
Mine fell just a little short of the 5 ft mark in the greenhouse. The maximum height was about 3-4 ft (1-1.2 m). Overall, it matches the packet description perfectly. It sets a flower truss every single leaf. You really need to thin the clusters, leaving only 3-4 fruits per truss, if you want them to reach that massive 14-17 oz (400-500 g) weight. If you just let it grow wild without thinning, the fruits top out at around 5-9 oz (150-250 g).
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pretty photos, nor any photos of the sliced fruits. The first photos are from May. Those clusters were thinned. The later ones are from July. By then I just let the trusses grow wild without pruning. They were already heavily picked over.
I want to point out something important: The fruits are very firm (I love tomatoes like that). They have a matte-orange color. They are surprisingly delicious, especially for a mid-early determinate, and honestly, just great overall. The bush itself isn’t exactly a “beauty”, though.
Svetik, how did you prune it in the greenhouse? 📝
Are there a lot of seeds and juice inside, or is it mostly meaty flesh?
And when did you sow the seeds indoors?
Did I understand correctly that it started ripening in early July?
🌸
Svetik, I pruned it to a single main leader (one stem). But I left one bush to just grow completely wild – that one had way more tomatoes, but they were much smaller, and the bush itself was shorter.
The fruits are meaty, not soft, and definitely not watery; they are very firm and dense with very little juice. They slice perfectly for salads.
I sowed them on March 10th. And yes, they started ripening in the first few days of July.
I’m in a rush, but I hope I answered everything clearly.
I grew Dietary Big Guy this year, seeds were from Siberian Garden. I completely agree with Svetlana’s description of this tomato. I liked it very much, I’m absolutely planting it again in 2015.
I also really liked Dietary Big Guy for its yield, large fruit size, pleasant taste, and decent shelf life. A very worthy variety.
A great variety for the open ground outdoors. I had 2 bushes. The bushes were totally normal, sturdy little guys about 3 feet (1m) tall. They were completely smothered in fruits about the size and shape of a tennis ball. The fruits are very firm. This isn’t a soft salad slicer like Zolotaya Koroleva (Golden Queen). I don’t can tomatoes, but this is exactly the kind of firm texture people look for in canning tomatoes. The only issue is that they won’t fit through the mouth of a standard mason jar. They might fit into wide-mouth jars. I didn’t thin the clusters at all. Quite early. Sown in mid-April, they easily had time to finish. Looking back, I think they ripened very uniformly; we left town when all the fruits were completely green, and when we came back a week later, the vast majority were already yellow-orange. Like many determinates, they are very easy and compact to manage in the seedling stage indoors.
I was very impressed with its performance outdoors in the open ground. It didn’t get sick, the bush is extremely sturdy. Lots of fruits, large, uniform, and very firm. For fresh salads, I grow Dwarf Tomato Project varieties and collectible beefsteaks, but for juices, sauces, and canning in wedges/chunks, this one is absolutely ideal. It wasn’t early for me, though. It only started ripening in early August, planted outside on May 19th.
👨🌾 Editor’s Notes:
- Cluster Thinning: Svetlana points out a fantastic advanced growing technique! When an heirloom sets 8-10 blossoms on a single truss, the plant simply cannot provide enough energy to size them all up. If you want giant, prize-winning 1+ lb tomatoes, you must practice “cluster thinning” (pinching off the end blossoms to leave only 3-4 fruits per truss). If you don’t care about size and just want total yield, leave them unpruned!
- “Dietary” Tomatoes: In Russia and Eastern Europe, yellow, orange, and white tomatoes are often aggressively marketed as “dietary” or “hypoallergenic”. This is because they lack lycopene (the red pigment), making them safer for people with severe tomato/lycopene allergies, and they generally have lower acidity, which is gentler on sensitive stomachs.
