📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Italianskie (Italian)
- 🌍 Origin: Sourced from various Russian seed collectors (like Petrov and Monakhova). Often compared to or suspected to be a strain of Super Italian Paste.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Vigorous indeterminate (tall) vines. Growers recommend pruning to 2 or 3 main leaders. Highly resistant to Late Blight and Blossom End Rot (BER).
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Red, elongated, blocky/sausage-shaped tomatoes with a glossy finish. They are known for having hollow locules (empty seed cavities) and very little juice.
- 👅 Flavor & Use: Because they are dry and semi-hollow, they are not ideal for fresh eating or juicing. However, their dense, chewy flesh makes them top-tier for canning whole or making sun-dried tomatoes.
I really liked this variety. Indeterminate, vigorous plant with strong foliage. The trusses hold 6-8 fruits. They are long, with no green shoulders, and they don’t crack. They are very dense and have small hollow locules inside, but honestly, I didn’t even notice the hollows once they were canned.
I opened a quart (1 L) jar specifically to taste-test these tomatoes. They stayed perfectly firm and tasted delicious. We ate the whole jar in one sitting 😋. The variety is quite resistant to Late Blight, and I had zero Blossom End Rot. It keeps growing right up until the frost. I will definitely be planting it again. These are going straight into the canning jars with the rest of my harvest.
Italianskie are beautiful tomatoes – red, glossy, and they have a really interesting shape. But mine were almost entirely hollow inside 😞. They were on the dry side with practically zero juice. I didn’t try pickling them, though.
These would be super convenient for sun-drying and dehydrating.
They seemed a bit dry to me too, but they are absolutely fantastic for canning, I didn’t even expect it. The flesh doesn’t turn to mush; they stay nice and firm. Last year the fruits were better, but this season the yield was lower and they were drier.
I agree they’d be great for sun-drying, but I worry about the skin! Will it be too chewy? It’s pretty thick. Definitely not suitable for juicing, but if you can them whole in tomato juice, they are incredibly tasty. Here is what they look like on the vine (the ripe red ones were already picked) on a single stem. It’s better to prune them to 2 or even 3 leaders, I think the plant can handle it.
Ladies, whose seed line of Italianskie did you grow?
Mine were from Petrov.
I grew them for 2 years as well. My seeds were from “Semenograd” – Petrov.
I’ll add my two cents: An interesting variety, but the tomatoes are definitely on the hollow side.
My seeds for this variety came from Vera Monakhova.
Here is what Italianskie looks like on the inside. It’s probably best suited for canning and drying.
Good day/night everyone. I’ve been looking at these photos over and over… and came to the conclusion that what I’m growing must be Italianskie too. I don’t remember where I got the seeds, but if it’s not this one, please correct me. I really loved this variety… and it matches the description perfectly 👏
Good day/night everyone. I’ve been looking at these photos over and over… and came to the conclusion that what I’m growing must be Italianskie too. I don’t remember where I got the seeds, but if it’s not this one, please correct me. I really loved this variety… and it matches the description perfectly 👏
It looks a lot like Zhigolo (Gigolo).
Ladies, correct me if I’m wrong 🫣. But this looks like a twin to Super Italian Paste. Mine looked exactly like this 🫣🫣🫣
It looks like a lot of different varieties, they probably just differ by plant habit and overall yield.
It looks a lot like Zhigolo (Gigolo).
No, it’s not Zhigolo 😉 it’s Italianskie 🎩. I absolutely fell in love with this variety for sun-drying, and it’s delicious canned. The fruit shape is so unusual – they look like little bricks 🥰
The discussion here perfectly illustrates the dilemma of growing elongated “sausage” style tomatoes (like Super Italian Paste, Jersey Devil, or the Russian variety Zhigolo). Many gardeners get alarmed when they slice them open and find dry, hollow seed cavities. But as Ladoga points out, this isn’t a defect—it’s a feature! That exact dry, hollow nature is what prevents them from turning to mush when processed in a water bath canner, and it makes them the absolute best choice for dehydrators. If you try to sun-dry a juicy beefsteak, it takes days and often molds. These “little bricks” dry down beautifully!
