📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Grushovka (Little Pear)
- 🌍 Origin: A legendary Russian heirloom name, but be aware: there are multiple distinct strains circulating under this name! The two most famous are the commercial strain bred by N.M. Egorov (a compact bush) and an old family heirloom strain popularized by a grower named Natalya Borisovna (a tall vining plant).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Egorov’s strain is a determinate bush (up to 2 ft / 60 cm) that requires absolutely no suckering (pruning). Borisovna’s strain is an indeterminate (tall) vine that does well pruned to 3 stems in a greenhouse. There is also a rugose tree-type dwarf strain from breeder Alexandrov.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Small, plum or pear-shaped fruits, usually weighing 1.4 to 2.5 oz (40-70 g). Depending on the strain, they can be pink or red. They have thin skin but very dense, meaty flesh.
- 👅 Flavor & Use: This is considered an absolute top-tier canning and pickling tomato. They hold their shape perfectly in jars, don’t crack in bad weather, and are highly productive.
An old family heirloom strain from Natalya Borisovna. In my opinion, this amateur variety absolutely deserves to be in our main catalog.
Quick question… are we only leaving reviews for this specific strain of Grushovka here? Or is this thread for ALL the Grushovkas? 😕
In our Hurma (Persimmon) thread, we have a great breakdown of the diversity of that variety, including versions from different seed companies. The Bull’s Heart thread is also thoroughly filled with different sub-strains.
Since this thread already features the Family strain, we can definitely include the strain from Egorov that’s going around among forum members, as well as ones from famous seed companies. We don’t split varieties into Part I and Part II in our catalog.
Grushovka from breeder Egorov. The bush is up to 2 ft (60 cm) tall, compact, 5-7 fruits per truss, from 1.7 oz (50 g) and up. The fruits are not dry, the skin is thin. The shape differs from the one described above. We didn’t sucker it at all. Mid-early, gives a huge flush of harvest all at once, and then trickles a little bit from the suckers for another 2 months. The bush was grown under a low tunnel.
The breeder’s description says it beats De Barao in taste and yield and that you can’t find a better canning tomato, but that wasn’t the case for us. Our Grushovka was completely done while De Barao kept giving fruit for a month longer, and the taste is unbeatable. For canning, Zastolnyi, Chelnok, and Smilyanskyi Rudasa came out ahead for me, and were more productive too.
My seeds were from L.F. Egorova. Here is the description from N.M. Egorov’s book:
“No, Grushovka sounds too rough. Almost like a swear word. What kind of Grushovka is she? Huh? She is Grushovochka (Little Pear). With a name like that, it sounds like a swallow or a weasel, it shouldn’t be called anything else. First of all, even amateur breeders couldn’t breed a better canning tomato. You might say De Barao is a good variety too. De Barao? Comparing De Barao to Grushovochka is like comparing a crawling crab to Mount Everest. Or Chomolungma even. You’ll say that’s the same mountain. The mountain might be the same, but Grushovochka and De Barao are not the same thing. If you plant De Barao, you better buy a stepladder; by the third truss, not even an Olympic high jumper could reach it. Only a flea. And most of us amateur gardeners are long past our jumping and skipping days. Plus, you can easily get blown right off a stepladder in our winds. But Grushovochka… The very name sounds like a pure little spring bubbling over stones. In terms of fruiting pace and duration, it’s even more like a spring: fruiting trusses in every leaf axil, from June to late October if grown under plastic. At a fifth of the height of De Barao, Grushovochka yields three times as much. And the ripening on the vine is simply mind-boggling: at the peak of the season, you harvest daily. What’s the exact yield? Exactly—none. No, no, no, not ‘none’, but it defies calculation. It’s a spring. You just can’t keep track of how much flowed out of the earth and how much flowed back in. The fruits are maybe 2.5 oz (70 g) each, every single one from the first to the last truss perfectly calibrated, and this is the only tomato variety that is best potted up and planted out when the Moon is in Gemini. The skin is paper-thin, thinner than a soap bubble, someone actually took the time to measure and compare. The flesh is dense. Only three seed locules, but the seeds have much more room in there than in a jail cell. Great for fresh eating and all kinds of preserves. A gardener’s dream, not just a variety. Fruits hang in garlands from top to bottom, perfectly even.”
I grew it outdoors in open ground. Short bush, heavy yielder, do not sucker it. Fruits are firm, store well, don’t crack in bad weather. Taste is decent, I canned them. Didn’t get Late Blight after spraying twice with a copper fungicide.
Very tasty when canned using the “Tomatoes with Garlic in the Bottoms” recipe.
Recipe: Make a cross-shaped slit in the bottom of the tomato and shove a slice of garlic into the cut. Parsley, peppercorns, and a bell pepper cut into 8 pieces go at the bottom of the jar.
Marinade: 3 liters of water, 2 tbsp salt, 8 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp 6% vinegar. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes first, let sit 20-30 mins; drain, then pour the boiling marinade over them. Seal the jars and wrap them in a blanket to cool slowly. (Alternative Marinade for 2L water: 8 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp salt, 140 ml 9% vinegar).
I have Grushovka from Egorov and also from Alexandrov. Alexandrov’s Grushovka is a tree-type dwarf. The fruits are pink, more like little plums than pears. But I like both of them. Even though they were supposedly breeding partners and their Grushovkas should be identical. 😕
Super variety.
Frozen.
Semechka wrote:
An old family heirloom strain from Natalya Borisovna. In my opinion, this amateur variety absolutely deserves to be in our main catalog.
I also grew this version of Grushovka from Borisovna. In the greenhouse it was an indeterminate, grew it to three stems, heavy yielder 👋 Very good tasting red little pears up to 2 oz (60 g), all-purpose use, perfect for canning jars.
The recipe Ovechka shares above is a classic example of traditional Russian/Eastern European winter preserves! Unlike the American method of water-bath canning crushed tomatoes or sauce with lemon juice, the Russian method involves packing whole, firm tomatoes (like Grushovka or De Barao) into large glass jars, adding aromatics, and pouring boiling sweet-and-sour vinegar marinade over them.The “Garlic in the Bottom” trick infuses the garlic flavor deep into the dense flesh of the tomato while it sits on the pantry shelf all winter. To do this successfully, you need a tomato exactly like Grushovka—one with firm flesh and skin that won’t turn to mush when hit with boiling water!
