📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Giannini
- 🌍 Origin: A rare heirloom variety with Italian roots, popularized in Eastern Europe by collector Valery Popenko.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall). It has a very flimsy, weeping “wispy” foliage structure, which is typical for many high-quality paste tomatoes.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Red, plum-shaped paste tomatoes with a distinct little beak on the blossom end. They typically weigh up to 5.3 oz (150 g).
- 👅 Flavor & Texture: Highly praised! The flesh is very meaty but surprisingly juicy, with a perfectly balanced, sweet flavor. Despite the thin skin, growers note that it rarely cracks.
- 💡 Grower Note: Can be prone to dropping blossoms during extreme weather or heatwaves.
Seeds from Popenko. Here is his very concise description: “Plum-shaped with a little beak, red, up to 5.3 oz (150 g), good flavor.”
In the greenhouse, it grew to about 6 feet (180 cm) tall. The flavor is good, very well-balanced. Juicy. The yield potential is excellent, but unfortunately, it dropped 3-4 trusses of blossoms due to unfavorable weather conditions.
It looks very similar to Tyumenskoe Chudo (Tyumen Miracle from Vera-Tomatinka), but Giannini is much juicier and meatier. In the photo, the plum tomato in the foreground is Tyumenskoe Chudo, and the three large plums slightly behind it are Giannini. They are actually the exact same size, you just have to take perspective into account since they are further back in the picture.
Edited November 12, 2016 by Drosera
I grew it for two seasons. The bush is very thin – I would even call it flimsy, with weeping (wispy) foliage. Every time I was dealing with the seedlings, I kept grumbling about how fragile they looked 😁
But the taste and texture are absolutely top-notch! 👍 It is now a permanent resident on my grow list!
I grew it outdoors in open ground. The first season, I topped the main stem so the fruits would have time to ripen before frost. The second season, I didn’t bother topping it. It climbed right off its 5-foot (1.5 m) stakes, sprawled its tops entirely into the neighboring garden bed, and produced a massive amount of fruit over there! I picked the last fully ripe ones off the “runaway” vines in mid-September.
Granted, we had a very sunny season this year, so it had time to give its all. If cold rains had set in, it probably would have just rotted to blight. In that regard, it’s a bit delicate. However, despite its thin skin and tender flesh, I don’t remember a single one ever cracking or splitting.
I didn’t measure the overall yield with a scale, but it was very decent.
Valyushik (Tina), a huge thank you for the seeds! 🙏
Edited January 8, 2019 by Bylinka
