📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): De Barao Gigant (Giant De Barao)
- 🌍 Origin: A large-fruited mutation/selection from the legendary Russian “De Barao” family of workhorse canning tomatoes.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. Incredibly vigorous, massive plants that easily exceed 6.5 feet (2 m) even when grown outdoors. Requires strong staking and support.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large plum/oval shaped tomatoes (some strains throw fruits with a little “beak” at the blossom end). They average 3.8-5.3 oz (110-150 g), making them significantly larger than standard De Barao varieties.
- 👅 Flavor & Use: Primarily a processing and canning tomato. Reviews on fresh-eating flavor are mixed (many find them bland compared to oxhearts), but their firm texture makes them hold up perfectly in jars.
- 💪 Standout Features: Known for extreme cold tolerance, rugged disease resistance (especially to blight), and massive yields. Note: It is a late-season variety that requires an early indoor seed-starting date!
I couldn’t find this specific De Barao in the catalog… I’ve been growing it for a long time and only outdoors in open ground. The variety is a tall indeterminate (even outdoors the plants easily top 6.5 feet / 2 m), it is very cold tolerant, and is capable of developing a massive root system. The fruits are firm, with good flavor, and are absolutely perfect for whole-fruit canning. The variety is considered late-season, but even in our cold climate zone, the fruits manage to ripen directly on the vines if you start the seeds early indoors.
Natasha 🙏, let me add photos of my De Barao Gigant too.
Mine grew out a bit different, unfortunately – more elongated, with a little beak/nipple on the blossom end, even though the picture on the packet looked just like yours…
Quote from Galina Mikhailovna:
Mine grew out a bit different, unfortunately – more elongated, with a little beak/nipple on the blossom end…
Sometimes they do get that little beak, I honestly haven’t figured out what causes it – might be the weather or the fertilizer. From the exact same batch of seeds, I had both barrel-shaped ones and beaked ones, looking like this.
Flavor-wise – not great. Pretty average, and compared to any good oxheart tomato, they are completely basic. But they are incredibly productive and rarely get sick!
Quote from Pomidoroved:
Sometimes they do get that little beak… Flavor-wise – not great. But they are incredibly productive and rarely get sick!
Well, yes, that is absolutely true 👍 You rarely get perfectly calibrated, uniform fruits from it… Temperature swings during fruit set probably play a role, and feeding, of course.
The variety is incredibly reliable in terms of yield 👍 I plant them in deep trenches, spaced 16-20 inches (40-50 cm) apart, in soil heavily amended with organics, and I usually prune them to 3 main stems… the trusses set fully from bottom to top. Your De Barao has a very interesting fruit shape, Pomidoroved 👍 I would love to try growing a strain like that 🤭
Edited December 5, 2014 by Yaroslavna
Galya, Natalia, how do you stake this outdoors? I hear it gets ridiculously tall. Also, when is the best time to sow seeds indoors?
Here is what mine looks like. Mid-early and very productive.
Quote from o-lya-lya:
Galya, Natalia, how do you stake this outdoors?
Olya, outdoors they really don’t get quite as tall as they do in a greenhouse. I grow all my indeterminates in open ground. Here is what my setup looks like. By the way, in the first photo, De Barao Gigant is on the right – in the second row, all the way at the edge (I think).
Quote from Elfiya:
Here is what mine looks like. Mid-early and very productive.
Alya, my De Barao Gigant was grown from your seeds! 😊 🙏 Thank you!!!
Galya, I know you grow everything outdoors, that’s exactly why I’m asking for your opinion 😉 At what height did you top them (cut their heads off)? And when did you start the seeds?
Edited December 6, 2014 by Drosera
Also Galya, the soil in your photo is so black, is it naturally like that or did you top dress it with something?
Quote from o-lya-lya:
Galya, Natalia, how do you stake this outdoors? I hear it gets ridiculously tall. Also, when is the best time to sow seeds indoors?
In the bed where I plant De Barao, I install special tall metal stakes, and I tie each plant to the stake with twine… as they grow, I wrap the main stem around the twine. The support structure is reinforced by hoops, which I install early in the spring right after transplanting (since I still have to cover the plants with frost cloth until the weather fully stabilizes).
Olya, I sowed them in mid-March. Planted them out around May 20th. I didn’t top anyone’s heads off this year 😂 If I had, I would have been left with no harvest. Early this summer, during the flowering of the first trusses, fruit set was terrible for all my tomatoes.
Quote from o-lya-lya:
Also Galya, the soil in your photo is so black, is it naturally like that or did you top dress it with something?
It’s peat moss.
Thank you, I got it now 🙏 My husband just brought me some tall wooden handles/poles. At first, the plants will go under the hoops, and then as they outgrow them, I’ll set up the poles. It makes it very easy to cover them early on; later their “legs” are exposed to the breeze, but by then it’s not scary. 😊
Quote from Galina P.:
I didn’t top anyone’s heads off this year…
And how many trusses did you get from it? Galya, I usually only top my plants in August, but my problem is different – pure greed (FOMO) 😂 😂 😂
What kind of peat do you use and what does it do?
Lowland black peat. It retains moisture and improves the soil structure.
I grew De Barao Gigant from Russian Ogorod (RO) seeds for three years. Never again. The plant is massively vigorous and takes up too much space, and the flavor is just not great – some are bland, some taste empty inside… if you try to store them, they lose whatever flavor they had. When pickled/canned, the skin holds up, but the inside turns into mush.
It does have its pros – it sets fruit endlessly, is incredibly low-maintenance, cold-tolerant, and never gets sick. I have a lot of respect for it for those reasons. The shape matched our respected admin Pomidoroved’s photos. If you have unlimited space, you can grow it; in my hoop house, it easily surpassed 6.5 feet (2 m).
I had one like this, but mine was more pink than red. I really liked it. 🤭
My De Barao Gigant was from Siberian Garden (SibSad). In my unheated glass greenhouse, it just doesn’t have enough time to show its full potential. It’s very late. If I sow it in early March, it only starts fruiting in late August. It also falls victim to tomato leaf mold (Cladosporium). Even though it’s more resistant and productive than others, I still have to rip all the plants out of the greenhouse in early September to wash and disinfect everything. Just as the plant is hitting its peak stride, it unfortunately gets ripped out with the rest. Thankfully, the leaf mold doesn’t affect the fruits themselves. This variety ripens off the vine quite well and tastes good. But I won’t grow it again – I want red tomatoes straight off the bush. I need early varieties!
Quote from Tatiana Kemerovo:
It’s very late. If I sow it in early March, it only starts fruiting in late August…
Tatiana 🙏 I totally understand your frustration, BUT, you are delaying the vegetative cycle of this variety by an entire month… a March seed-starting date is way too late for this specific tomato. That’s exactly why you aren’t seeing red fruit on the vine…
I start my seeds for this variety in the very first days of February… This plant needs a much longer head start to develop properly.
Edited December 6, 2014 by Yaroslavna
I’ll throw in my two cents… I grew several De Barao varieties this year – about 7 different types. My sowing wasn’t very early – mid-March. I picked the first ripe ones on August 6th… so definitely not early 😉. The hero of this thread, De Barao Gigant, was also from Russian Ogorod (RO). It produced all the way until the first frosts. Unlike the other De Barao strains, its fruits are genuinely much larger – averaging over 3.8 oz (110 g), while the other types average 1.4-2.8 oz (40 to 80 g). Didn’t try eating any fresh – they all went straight into canning jars… Here they are altogether – the “giants” are the ones on top.
This is my first time buying seeds from Siberian Garden (SibSad) and I was really surprised that the seeds are literally stapled to the back of the cardboard packaging. Can someone tell me if this is their legit packaging or a fake?
It’s legit.
The variety is indeed late. But very good. Sweet, meaty. Very dense in canning jars. Grew it outdoors in open ground. I can’t seem to find a photo of the full bush. 🤭
Here is my red De Barao Gigant from SibSad, alongside Natasha’s (Yaroslavna) pink one. Natasha, it’s an absolute treasure for pickling/canning. The yield is miraculous; I don’t have a photo of the full bush, just the first truss, but the entire plant is strung with clusters like a Christmas garland.
Galya, I agree with you completely 📝 I make sure to grow a few bushes of it every single season… If I run out of space in the garden beds 😫 I’ve adapted to planting it against the south-facing wall of my barn (sadly I don’t have a photo of this)… I build a low raised bed structure for them and just keep adding compost to it throughout the summer. The wall provides extra shelter, and it’s super convenient to tie the tall stems directly to it.
Which shape had the “miraculous” yield? The rounder ones or the pepper-shaped ones?
1. The “De Barao” Legacy: Originally hailing from Brazil but adapted heavily during the Soviet era, the De Barao family (which comes in red, pink, black, yellow, and giant) is considered the ultimate bulletproof workhorse for cold climates. They are legendary for surviving frosts, resisting blight, and producing endless clusters of firm canning tomatoes.
