📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Bozhya Korovka (Ladybug)
- 🌍 Origin: A commercial Russian variety introduced by the “Aelita” seed company. The name translates to “Ladybug”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Highly debated! The seed packet claims it is a compact determinate (12-20 inches / 30-50 cm). However, almost all forum growers report it growing huge—up to 5-6.5 feet (1.5-2 m) tall, showing clear signs of crossed seeds or unstable genetics (an off-type). It has an incredibly massive root system. Not recommended for indoor/balcony growing despite the packet description.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Round, bright red cherry tomatoes with glossy, thick skin. Fruits weigh up to 0.7 oz (20g). Very seedy.
- 👅 Flavor: Very mixed reviews. Some find it acceptable with classic tomato notes, while others report it being extremely sour.
- ⏳ Maturity & Yield: Very early season. It produces an absolute avalanche of cherry tomatoes and keeps pumping them out right up until the first frost.
- 🥫 Best Use: Due to its thick skin and high seed content, it is highly recommended for canning whole (they hold their shape beautifully in jars).
Description from the seed packet:
A very early variety (80 days from emergence to harvest), recommended for open ground and low hoophouses. The plant is determinate, 30-50 cm (12-20 inches) tall. The fruit is round, intense red with a glossy skin, very firm. Fruit weight up to 20 g (0.7 oz). Excellent taste.
Photo author: Olya
I grew it. 😳 The taste is just a regular tomato flavor! I remember there were a ton of little tomatoes on the bush, and it kept pumping them out right up until the frost. The tomatoes aren’t large.
I grew it this year for an early harvest. It started ripening a bit later than Boni MM, Iyonskiy (June), and Kazabalykskiy Superearly. I absolutely loved the avalanche of little tomatoes — I’ve never seen so many on a single cherry plant before! And it produced steadily from June to August! The plants got a little over 3.3 ft (1m) tall and grew more outward than upward. The foliage is pretty wispy, so all the fruits got plenty of sun.
One downside — it was incredibly seedy 😬. I mostly used them for canning whole with honey; I recently opened a jar — delicious 😋. My neighbor got some too, I was giving them away by the bucketload (5 liters / 1.3 gal), and I only had 2 plants! 😄 😮
It was a total dud for me. It grew into a massive 6.5 ft (2 m) vine on my windowsill and gave me exactly 3 super sour, tough-skinned little fruits.
My window gets plenty of light (South-East). Ultimately, I just pulled it and tossed it in the middle of summer.
Bonsai and Utenok (Duckling) varieties, which were sitting right next to it, did get a bit leggy, but performed much better. For that, they were rewarded with a trip to the country house in June and transplanted outdoors in open ground, where they gave another gorgeous wave of harvest (the branches were just buckling under the weight of the fruit).
ellea wrote:
It was a total dud for me. It grew into a massive 6.5 ft (2 m) vine on my windowsill and gave me exactly 3 super sour, tough-skinned little fruits… Ultimately, I just pulled it and tossed it in the middle of summer.
Elena, when did you start the seeds? This is exactly what happens when you sow too early. This variety is not Bonsai or Utenok, it’s not a micro-dwarf or a tree-type, it’s actually a pretty tall determinate! That’s why they grew into leggy, spindly plants that couldn’t produce a normal yield. I’ve been trying for ages to explain to folks that starting seeds super early means you must transplant them outside early too. Otherwise, the plant stretches out, leaves turn yellow—not even from a lack of nutrients, but because it needs proper space for its roots; it gets severely root-bound… 😞 But for some reason, my venting just doesn’t seem to get through to folks here… and people are still trying to start seeds in January 🤦♀️.
Ninulia wrote:
Elena, when did you start the seeds? This is exactly what happens when you sow too early…
Yes, I definitely sowed it early, late January I think, but I planned from the get-go to grow it as an early windowsill tomato. I potted it up as it grew—did everything by the book, and transplanted it into a big 3.2-gallon (12 L) bucket by April. The foliage was fine—it didn’t turn yellow or wither… but I never saw any edible harvest, unfortunately. It just shot up 4 times taller than what the seed packet claimed. 😮
Meanwhile, the same Bonsai and Utenok suffered way longer in small 1-quart (1 L) pots—they never even got up-potted, yet they turned out much better.
That said, it did justify its “early” claim—the plant grew very vigorously, and perhaps with a standard planting schedule outdoors, it would have yielded a decent crop. For myself, I concluded that either it’s completely unsuitable for balcony growing, or it was mislabeled seed (an off-type).
The seed company claims on the packet: determinate, 30-50 cm (12-20 inches). Maybe someone actually got bushes that small. We’ll wait and see. I can only show you my 5-foot (1.5 m) tall one too. I sowed it early along with true compact determinates for an early harvest: Turboreaktivny, Iyonskiy, Zolotnik, Utenok, and the sprawling Mongolian Dwarf.
They didn’t shoot up like crazy from the early planting; they stayed stocky right up until transplanting outdoors on April 11th. But this one didn’t care at all about what the seed company claimed. While it was busy stretching out, it took its sweet time setting fruit, whereas we were already harvesting and eating the others.
There are still tomatoes hanging on Bozhya Korovka right now under a row cover. Height is 5 feet (1.5 m). The cherries are firm, just as Aelita promised; they’re going straight into canning jars. In fact, we already canned a batch—a few split their skins, but the flesh stayed perfectly firm.
“Where is the ground? Oh, it’s so high, we won’t fall, we don’t have parachutes.”
I definitely got crossed seeds (an off-type) in my packet, but it turned out to be a good one. Early maturing, not the absolute tastiest, but still tasty. Since Aelita isn’t exactly known for breeding the best outdoor varieties, I’m currently looking for a replacement for it as my earliest outdoor tomato.
I grew a variety that looked a lot like Bozhya Korovka called “Ideal”. It was a cocktail type, but with a deeper, richer color. I grow Bozhya Korovka paired with Gold Nugget. They have similar fruits of roughly the same size. One is red, the other is yellow.
I grew Bozhya Korovka from Aelita back in 2015, and decided to give it another shot in 2020, thinking maybe I didn’t give it a fair chance and missed out on a gem.
My 2020 planting gave me this result:
The bush is powerful, but loaded with an unbelievable amount of super sour little peas.
It’s honestly a waste of garden space. I guess I was right to send it straight to the cull pile back in 2015, yet I took it into my head to try it again. Oh, what a joy it is to pick tiny peas like this all summer long… 🙄
The plant itself grew into an absolute monster, though.
fenics wrote:
The plant itself grew into an absolute monster, though.
That root system is massive! It’d make a great rootstock for grafting nightshades! 😄
Mine were a bit bigger. Still cherry size, though. Veeeeery prolific.
