Kazachka Tomato Review & Photos: A Heavy-Yielding Dark Cocktail

Indet vine, pumped out fruits from early August all the way to late September. The fruits are small and have a beautiful brownish-cherry color. It’s a fantastic variety for processing, and they taste absolutely amazing canned whole in jars. (My seeds were from Sibsad).

Edited January 9, 2013 by Drosera

Sveta, I saw N.A. Borzykh growing Kazachka, and hers looked way more like a plum/paste type!

Mine was from Sibsad too, but it was more barrel-shaped and not nearly as dark. Honestly, I didn’t like it for canning at all. Mine turned to total mush when fully ripe. It used to be listed in the catalog on the old forum.

I ordered seeds from Kholyavko. His look a lot like Sveta’s: round and dark. Natalia Dryzhakova’s photo in the Yaroslavl tomatoes thread also shows them as slightly oblate and dark.

Here is a photo of my Kazachka. The main stem is pretty thick, and the plant is pretty short right now, maybe 1.5 ft (45 cm). Photo is from May 29. Growing in the greenhouse, seeds from Sibsad:

Variety: Kazachka Round
Breeder: Sibsad
Flavor profile: Very bold flavor, starts with a nice acidic tang and smoothly transitions into sweet and fragrant. If you pick it unripe, you get absolutely zero sweetness. It’s really hard to tell when it’s fully ripe. A ripe fruit has a cherry-red top, while an unripe one is brownish-cherry.
Plant type: Indet vine, over 6.5 ft (2 m).
Weight, color and shape: Single fruits are 1-1.4 oz (30-40 g), megabloom (fused) fruits are about 3 oz (85 g). Color is brownish-cherry. Smooth, singles are round, fused ones are oblate.
Pros: Heavy yielder, up to 19 blossoms per truss. Even without any fertilizer, it consistently sets 9-13 fruits per truss for me.
Cons: Ripens incredibly slowly.
Maturity: Very late (120+ days). First ripe tomato was August 11.
Foliage: Regular leaf (RL).
Truss: Complex.
Flesh: Multi-locular (5 locules), tons of seeds.
Uses: Fresh eating, juicing, salsa/sauce bases.
Grown in: Greenhouse.
Yield: In my experience, a vine pruned to 2 leaders gave me at least 4 trusses with 9 fruits each, averaging about 3 lbs (1.3 kg) per plant by September. Still setting trusses, might ripen two more.
Cracking: The skin is very tender, highly prone to splitting right when you pick it.
Photo of the plant:

Single fruit – weighs 1 oz (32 g).
Megabloom (fused) fruit – weighs 3 oz (86 g).
Photos of the sliced fruits:

That looks absolutely amazing! Is this variety easy to care for? Not too fussy? And does it only grow in a greenhouse?

I don’t really baby my tomatoes at all. Just the bare minimum: a handful of compost at planting, regular tying, pruning suckers, and watering.
That’s how I judge if a variety is a diva. If it drops blossoms, lacks energy to grow, cracks constantly, or catches the crud under my minimal care routine, I consider it fussy.

Kazachka does perfectly fine with my lazy approach. The only real downsides are that it doesn’t manage to ripen very many clusters before the season ends, almost like it runs out of gas for the top ones. Plus, not every blossom sets fruit. You also have to watch it like a hawk for picking time – pick too early and it’s sour, pick too late and it splits because the skin is so tender.

Aside from that, it never caught a single disease. I’m definitely running a bunch more bushes next year because the flavor is absolutely killer for making salsa, juice, and soup bases.

If you have the setup to manage towering indet vines outdoors in the dirt, go for it. I can’t pull that off here. We get crazy winds that knock everything down – corn, sunflowers… the only thing that survives is the sunchokes.

I have Kazachka from Sibsad. Fruits are round and slightly oblate. They are a bit on the soft side and the flesh is slightly watery, but the vine was wildly productive and I really enjoyed the flavor. The skins did split when I canned them, but they still tasted great. Ran it in the greenhouse, very tall vine. I’m definitely planting it again because it’s been the highest-yielding dark tomato I’ve grown so far.

Danko wrote:
I ordered from Kholyavko, his look like Sveta’s, round and dark, Natalia Dryzhakova’s photo in the Yaroslavl tomatoes thread also shows them as slightly oblate and dark.

Yeah, I really liked this variety for its neat, perfectly uniform, dense tomatoes. The plant itself is gorgeous – a vigorous indet vine with massive leaves. It throws really long clusters (they honestly look like a Cossack girl’s braids). The fruits are a deep dark-cherry color, weighing 2.5-3 oz (70-80 g), and they hold incredibly well on the vine without going bad.

I grew it in the greenhouse to test it out, pruned it to 3 leaders, and it produced a massive harvest! I didn’t try canning them whole; I processed the entire batch into tomato juice (it makes a stunning dark juice 👍 and tastes incredible!!!).

Here’s my Kazachka! This is how it grew for me. Really loved this variety! 😋👍

Lenok, did you prune it to a single leader?

Verunya wrote:
Lenok, did you prune it to a single leader?

Verun, I ran it to 2 leaders. The vine is a total powerhouse. Honestly, looking at where I trimmed the leaves, I think you could easily let it run to 3 stems since it’s not a giant beefsteak variety.

Elena, did you end up canning these?

Galina P. wrote:
Elena, did you end up canning these?

Oh yeah, absolutely, Galina. They are super dense. They hardly cracked at all in the jars, and at the very least, the skin didn’t peel back or blow out 😂.

– Vine habits: late-season, sprawling, rugged, and tall.
– Fruit set: doesn’t drop a single blossom.
– Height: reached 6 ft (1.8 m) outdoors in the dirt by August 22, the last fruits are ripening now.
– Clusters: 4-6 fruits per cluster.
– Overall yield: above average.
– Fruit: round, burgundy-purple with brown shoulders.
– Density of ripe fruit: medium.
– Flavor: bold tomato taste, meaty, sweetness is a solid 4 out of 5.

First impression: this is a dedicated processing tomato. The downsides – the fruits get soft quickly once ripe, and they just lacked a bit of juiciness for fresh eating.
My ratings: Seedling vigor – 3, Vine – 4+, Fruit – 4, Overall variety rating – 4 out of 5.