📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Knyaz (The Prince)
- 🌍 Origin: Heirloom paste variety popularized by collector N. Ananyeva. The name translates to “Prince”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Officially listed as indeterminate (tall), but growers frequently report it acting as a semi-determinate by topping itself off around 3.3 feet (1 m). Standout feature: It is incredibly eager to produce suckers, so stay on top of your pruning!
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Massive, elongated red plums or “icicles” with a distinct pointy beak on the blossom end. They can easily reach 6 inches (15 cm) in length!
- 👅 Flavor & Use: A solid, classic tomato flavor. The flesh is incredibly dense, meaty, and almost seedless without being overly dry.
If you are looking for the ultimate tomato for thick sauces or homemade sun-dried tomatoes, this heavy-yielding workhorse is exactly what you need. Read the grower tips below on how to manage its wild growth habit!
Seeds from N. Ananyeva. The description says it is a tall mid-season plant with huge fruits up to 6 inches (15 cm) long. Almost seedless, very meaty, and I really liked it!
It was pushing out suckers left and right but I managed to keep it pruned to 2 stems. But when the plant reached about 3.3 feet (1 m) tall it just topped itself. I let a couple more suckers grow out. They set a couple of trusses each and then terminated too. I honestly still can’t tell if this is a determinate or indeterminate variety. But the yield on this thing is absolutely crazy.
Huge plum-icicle shapes with a little beak on the end, easily 6 inches (15 cm) long. The flesh is extremely dense but not dry at all. The flavor is pretty decent even if it doesn’t exactly blow your mind. Almost my entire harvest went straight into the dehydrator for sun-dried tomatoes. Overall I’m really happy with it.
Yulia ran into a classic situation that confuses many growers: an “indeterminate” plant that abruptly stops growing from the main leader. In the US, we usually classify these as semi-determinate.
Notice Yulia’s pro-move here: when the main stem terminated (capped off with a blossom cluster instead of a growing tip), she simply let a lower sucker take over as the new main stem to keep the harvest going. This is the exact right way to handle a plant that unexpectedly tops itself mid-season!
