Quick Summary of Tolstyi Botsman (Fat Boatswain)
- 🌍 Origin: A commercial Russian variety introduced by the “Semena Altaya” (Seeds of Altai) company. The rather unique name translates to “Fat Boatswain”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Determinate (bush). Intended for growing outdoors in open ground.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Striped bicolor tomatoes (red with golden/yellowish streaks). The largest fruits reach about 220g (7.7 oz). Note: Some growers report getting plain red fruits with no stripes, indicating potential seed mix-ups (off-types) from the vendor.
- 👅 Flavor: Widely considered a disappointment. Most growers rate the taste as completely mediocre (sweet-and-sour at best, “tasteless” at worst).
- 🛡️ Disease Resistance: Very poor. In seasons with high disease pressure, this variety is often one of the very first to succumb entirely to late blight (phytophthora).
- 📉 Overall Verdict: The general consensus on the forum is to skip this one. It grows very slowly, gets sick easily, and doesn’t offer a good enough flavor to justify the effort.
I grew the variety “Tolstyi Botsman” (Fat Boatswain) from the Semena Altaya seed company in 2012 in open ground. Determinate. The fruits filled out very slowly. The weight of the largest fruit was 220g (7.7 oz). The taste was sweet-and-sour.
I also grew it in 2012, seeds from the same manufacturer. It was quite late. It set a lot of fruits, but I never got to taste them ripe, because despite all my preventative spraying, the entire plant got wiped out by late blight (phytophthora). Out of 17 varieties I grew, only two got infected, and one of them was Fat Boatswain. I cut the infected spots off all the green tomatoes and canned them green into a traditional relish/salad.
Lyuda, did you prune (sucker) your “Fat Boatswain”? Yours looks very nice in the photo and actually has stripes. Many people complained that theirs didn’t have any stripes and were just regular red tomatoes, probably mixed-up seeds (off-types). I included it in my planting plans for the open ground, I’ll plant 2 bushes. The seeds have been sitting around for 2 years, I need to try them—maybe I’ll get lucky and it will actually match the variety description.
Meri, I don’t even remember if I pruned it or not. I didn’t really like the taste. But yeah, it was pretty, nice and striped.
I didn’t like Fat Boatswain either, there are much better varieties out there.
This is what it looks like… in its packaging…
I grew it this year from that exact same packet. It was absolutely nothing special. I could easily add it to my list of total disappointments.
