Krasnaya Mishen (Red Target) Tomato Review & Photos

Krasnaya Mishen (Red Target)

Mine look a bit different. Maybe because they got hit by a freeze. They are smaller. The green part is darker, but the red part is actually brighter. I have photos, but they look pretty rough. These were the scrawny runts by the time I finally noticed them. I can’t seem to insert the photo, but I’ll try… ah, uploading to the old catalog worked.

How’s the flavor and yield? What about the vine height?

Galya, they actually fruited on late suckers. I picked them green without even realizing what variety they were at first. The taste is totally fine. God willing, next year I’ll plant both Lida’s seeds and my own to compare them side-by-side.

Hey folks, I’m confused, is it a green-when-ripe variety? Why is it called “Red Target”? Is there just a red blush on a green tomato?

And could you give some more details on the plant? Height… fruit size? Is it a heavy yielder? Mid-season or early?

Folks, what kind of leaf does Red Target actually have? I accidentally dropped my seedling trays earlier this year, and now I have both Potato Leaf (PL) and Regular Leaf (RL) plants growing under this name. 😳

Galochka, I didn’t drop my seedling trays at all, and I also have both Potato Leaf and Regular Leaf growing! 😂 And I’m not the only one. We even came up with a theory – could it be segregating back to its parent lines? But generally, the standard strain is supposed to be Regular Leaf. 🌺

Makes you wonder who the parents actually are! 😂😂😂

I have 2 plants, both with regular leaves. The trusses are actually looking pretty good right now.

Mine has regular leaves…

Potato Leaf here. High yielder, honey-sweet flavor! 😋😋😋

My Red Target and Happy Captain (from Popenko’s seeds) look absolutely identical. Photo is from the 2014 harvest.

I ended up loving both Targets (the Potato Leaf and the Regular Leaf versions). Honestly, I liked them even more than my favorite Malachite Box. The fruits are slightly smaller, but that flavor!!! I saved seeds from both, but following my own tradition, I totally mixed them up (didn’t label which was which, relied on my memory, but it took a day off 😂). Oh well, I’ll be able to tell them apart once they grow into seedlings.

Ladies, give us the actual stats for this variety! Height, maturity, weight… indeterminate or determinate? Greenhouse or outdoors in the dirt?

Indeterminate, late season, greenhouse. 7-10.5 oz (200-300 g). That’s my conclusion anyway.

tomatinka wrote:

Indeterminate, late season, greenhouse. 7-10.5 oz (200-300 g). That’s my conclusion anyway.

Vera, my seeds were actually from you. 😉 It grew outdoors in the dirt. It’s an indeterminate, totally not late season at all, crazily productive, but honestly not super tasty. 😳 Maybe I should move it to the greenhouse next time? I can only imagine how massive the yield would be in there. By the way, it is totally disease-resistant, didn’t catch any crud. 🙂

Ol, this year I grew my own saved seeds, seeds from Lida, and some from a commercial pack. And across the board, they produced both Regular Leaf and Potato Leaf plants. Only one of my own PL plants actually survived. And it gave exactly one tomato. I saved seeds from that single fruit. I’m going to keep torturing this line. I really want them all to have the exact same leaf type. So I’m not going to sow last year’s seeds next season. I’ll sow the ones I saved this year… we’ll see. It was probably just way too cold for them here this summer. 😳

tomatinka wrote:

Ol, this year I grew my own saved seeds, seeds from Lida, and some from a commercial pack. And across the board, they produced both Regular Leaf and Potato Leaf plants… Only one of my own PL plants actually survived. And it gave exactly one tomato.

Nah, Verun, mine had regular leaves, but the fruits were really unusual. 😂 Green-brown-red. 😂 I even asked the other girls here about when they are considered ripe. 🙂 Lida seemed to have the same kind.

The fruits look identical on all of them, but the vines themselves are different. Same with Lida’s. Did you save seeds? That would be the third generation. My RL plants didn’t survive this year. 😞

tomatinka wrote:

The fruits look identical on all of them, but the vines themselves are different. Same with Lida’s. Did you save seeds? That would be the third generation. My RL plants didn’t survive this year. 😞

You bet I did, of course I saved them. 😂😂😂

Verun, want me to send you some? It’s a hugely productive variety, it didn’t care at all that it was growing outdoors in the open dirt.

Ol, I still have my seeds from last year. I’ll just sow those and I’ll get my regular leaf plants back. 😉

My Red Targets also split into 2 variations – regular leaf and potato leaf, and the germination rate was basically 50/50. I really loved the flavor of both, and they taste very similar. The potato leaf ones are slightly larger, but the regular leaf vine produces way more of them. I just found a photo from late August, they look pretty rough because they cracked in the greenhouse. But to be fair, a lot of my greenhouse varieties cracked at the end of August, it was like a massive epidemic. 🤦‍♀️ The PL ones are on the left, RL on the right. And these tomatoes weren’t late season at all for me, I’d almost classify them as early.

When people came to buy tomatoes from me in the middle of summer, this variety (or varieties???) was the most requested one. Especially by the kids! They were incredibly tasty. Even other gardeners asked me for seeds because their own harvests hadn’t started ripening yet.

It was probably just too cold here for me, that’s why they were late. Ninul, didn’t it seem to you like this variety is somehow related to Black Pineapple (Ananas Noire)? There has to be some kind of genetic family tie there… 😉

Verochka, I’ve actually never tried Black Pineapple, I don’t have that one. But these little tomatoes have a greenish base color on the inside, whereas a pineapple should probably be dark raspberry if it’s “black”. 😂

Mine is also mostly green. 😉 Ninul, maybe I should send you some… pineapple seeds.

Ninulia wrote:

My Red Targets also split into 2 variations – regular leaf and potato leaf, and the germination rate was basically 50/50… When people came to buy tomatoes from me in the middle of summer, this variety (or varieties???) was the most requested one. Especially by the kids! They were incredibly tasty.

Ninulya, those are the ones you got from me. I had nothing to do with it, I just bought the seeds, planted them, and that’s what grew out of them.

Yes, Lidusha, they were from your seeds. And I absolutely loved them! It is highly possible that it’s just a variety with genetics that haven’t fully stabilized yet. But it is definitely a winner!

I really liked Red Target, the tomatoes were uniform, quite large, and mid-season for me. The flavor is sweet, vaguely reminiscent of Black Pineapple (Ananas Noire). The seeds were from Lidochka, a huge thank you to her! 🌺

A very worthy variety. For me, it performed even better than Black Pineapple – heavy yielder, ABSOLUTELY beautiful, and great flavor. Top class! 👍

Lidiya wrote:

My Red Target and Happy Captain (from Popenko’s seeds) look absolutely identical. Photo is from the 2014 harvest.

I grew the Red Target variety, loved it! 👍 Now I just bought what turns out to be its blood brother, Happy Captain (Captain Lucky). 😕

I grew Red Target this year, mine had potato leaves. Fruits were 10.5-14 oz (300-400 g), heavy yielding vine, not late season. I tried them at various times throughout the summer, and the flavor was just completely bland. Or maybe we had just eaten too many other tasty tomatoes by then. I also planted Black Pineapple. The varieties are extremely similar, the only difference is in the shape–Black Pineapple is more oblate (flattened), and it has regular leaves. But the flavor is vastly superior. Black Pineapple is staying, Red Target is getting booted off the list.

Mine turned out absolutely gorgeous! Extremely tasty, and visually; just mind-blowing. The seeds were from some gardener meet-up, I just found an old packet laying around and planted it.

I plant Red Target almost every single year. I’ll be repeating it next season too. It’s delicious! 👍 Everyone I shared it with loved the taste, a really sweet tomato. Some of them weighed over 1.1 lbs (500 g).

I also had 2 plants of Red Target in 2017. One was regular leaf, the second was potato leaf. I only planned to grow one plant per variety, so the second one suffered in its seedling cup for a long time, I was going to throw it out. The poor thing turned completely purple from lack of nutrients and its leaves started falling off. But I had an empty spot out in the dirt, so I just shoved it in the ground and forgot about it. Didn’t even put a stake up. It just sprawled on the ground. I didn’t feed it, didn’t water it. I only pinched the growing tips off closer to fall.

Of course, the fruits didn’t have time to ripen, but it set a massive amount of huge tomatoes, a full bucket off one plant.

(Sorry, the image resize window isn’t popping up on my tablet, so I could only insert the photos like this).

The one in the greenhouse did ripen and was incredibly tasty, not bland at all. Sadly, no photos of that one.

SUPER!!!

Potato leaf. Grew about 4 feet (1.2 m) tall outdoors in the dirt. The foliage didn’t catch any diseases, but the fruits are incredibly susceptible to crud. This variety left me with very mixed feelings.

On one hand, it is insanely productive. The first three trusses had fruits weighing 17.5-21 oz (500-600 g) without any real effort on my part.

On the other hand, it has zero shelf life, it immediately starts rotting on whatever side it’s resting on. It splits like crazy, and sooner or later mold starts growing inside the cracks (with my other varieties, cracks usually dried over and didn’t get infected). Any spot where two tomatoes are touching each other turns into a crack.

These giant fruits ripen very unevenly, the sun-facing side might be ripe, while the shaded side isn’t. Or you cut open a fruit that feels ripe and soft to the touch, and the core is completely green. The one in the photo is exactly like that: the top half is ripe, the bottom is green.

As a result, I didn’t get to taste a single fully intact, healthy, ripe fruit. Just a bunch of carved-up scraps… 😞 I don’t know what it tastes like, I didn’t wait long enough to find out.

I highly doubt I’ll grow it again. I’m going to look for something similar but better. Because it really is beautiful when sliced!

An interesting variety. Great for lovers of exotic tomatoes. Beautiful when sliced open. Tasty. The yield wasn’t that great for me. I don’t remember the leaf type exactly, but it was most likely regular, otherwise I definitely would have remembered it.

My Target)))) It earned a permanent spot on my grow list in 2019.