📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Karacharovsky Mayak (Karacharovo Lighthouse)
- 🌍 Origin: An old amateur Russian heirloom from the historic village of Karacharovo. The name translates to “Karacharovo Lighthouse”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall) greenhouse variety. It is a very vigorous, heavily foliated vine with an incredible will to survive tough conditions. It responds well to being pruned to 2, 3, or even 4 stems.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Bright red, blocky, barrel-shaped plum tomatoes. They consistently weigh in around 5 to 7 oz (150-200 g).
- 👅 Flavor & Use: Classic, sweet tomato flavor with dense, sugary, “pure meat” flesh. Picked fruits have an exceptionally long shelf life. It is highly versatile—great for fresh salads, canning in jars, or traditional whole-barrel fermenting. Read the forum posts below to find out why one grower’s family affectionately renamed this bulletproof variety the “Karacharovsky Maniac”!
This summer I tested a very interesting indeterminate variety for the greenhouse called Karacharovsky Mayak. Turns out, it’s an old amateur variety from the village of Karacharovo, the very same place where Ilya Muromets was born!
It grew in a rather dim corner of the greenhouse, but it showed off all its best traits. The vine was vigorous and leafy, and it set every single flower cluster. The fruits are bright red, shaped like little barrels, and weigh around 5 to 7 oz (150-200 g), with dense, sweet flesh.
Picked fruits store for quite a long time. They are great for fresh eating and all sorts of canning. I will definitely be growing this variety again next season, but in much better conditions.
Excellent variety, great for salads and for canning in jars. I grew it to two stems. It’s a powerful indeterminate vine, so I think you could easily try running it to 3 or 4 stems, it feels like it would handle it just fine. Thanks to Olechka-Cherry for the seeds!
Plena wrote:
Pure meat! 😋 Fantastic variety! 👍
I bet Ilya Muromets bred this variety himself. 😄 He had nothing else to do while lying on the stove for 33 years anyway. 🙈
I grew it in the greenhouse this year under spunbond row covers. It was a really tough year: cold spring, dry summer, but this variety really showed what it can do. We picked the last tomatoes a week ago, and it single-handedly provided half of our barrel-fermented harvest. Seeds were from Yaroslavna, huge respect and special thanks to her – they came as a freebie bonus packet with my order.
My family renamed this variety the “Karacharovsky Maniac” because of its sheer will to live. It manages to survive and produce at least something even in spots where other tomatoes flat out refuse to grow. Good flavor, I’d even say above average. Excellent texture, sugary meat, perfect little barrels. 🙂
It’s our absolute favorite red tomato.
Yields are great. In the Moscow region, it really is best to keep it in a greenhouse.
Considering this is the only red variety I’ve grown three years in a row and already put on my grow list for 2020, well, I think you get the idea. 🙂
It’s my sweetheart. 🙂
Edited: I edit my posts often, my eyesight is bad.
Over the winter we bought some “Karachaevskie” seeds, supposedly a 19th-century heirloom of the Karachay people. As you can probably guess, given the unfortunate historical events, that’s highly unlikely. Most likely, someone just mixed up the name with “Karacharovsky Mayak”. The “Karachaevskie” aren’t doing well for us at all – they took forever to flower and set fruit, it looks like a total bust. I’m going to give the seeds away to other people. It would be really interesting to give them to someone to grow side-by-side with Karacharovsky Mayak for comparison. Let me know if anyone is interested.
In this thread, you might have noticed some funny references to “Ilya Muromets” lying on a stove for 33 years. For an American reader, this sounds entirely random!
Ilya Muromets is one of the most famous legendary knights (bogatyrs) in Russian folklore, and he supposedly hailed from the village of Karacharovo (where this tomato gets its name). According to legend, Ilya was paralyzed from birth and lay on a traditional Russian masonry stove for 33 years until he was miraculously healed by wandering pilgrims, after which he became an invincible warrior. User Andrey_K is making a fantastic cultural joke that Ilya bred this tomato variety because he had nothing else to do while stuck on the stove for three decades.
