Growers’ Notes and Photos
O-La-La (from SibSad). Grew this outdoors in 2012. Definitely got some off-types in the packet. Out of 4 plants I put in the ground, one turned out to be anything but O-La-La. Just some tiny, red, sour little thing. But the remaining three true O-La-La plants were enough for me to really evaluate and fall in love with the variety.
Semi-determinate, got to about 4 ft (1.2 m) tall outdoors. Pretty heavy yielder. The fruits are dark pink, incredibly tasty, sweet, and juicy. They are round with a very slight, barely noticeable nub on the blossom end, and the weight was super uniform across the whole plant, right around 5.3-6.3 oz (150-180 g). Sets fruit really well on the upper trusses. The top ones just didn’t have time to ripen, I had to pull everything green because of late blight. Gonna try it in the greenhouse next time. This was my top discovery this year, absolutely loved it.
Edited January 29, 2015 by Drosera
And here is the upper truss:
Planted it outdoors in 2011 too. Seeds were from SibSad. Out of 6 plants, not a single one matched the catalog description, and every single one turned out to be completely different from the others 😂 And only two of them actually produced pink fruits! One of those gave me 2 trusses of tiny 2.5-3 oz (70-80 g) tomatoes, and the other threw a couple trusses of flattened, boat-shaped fruits around 5 oz (140 g) in a gorgeous pink shade. But they all got sick once the heat hit. The ones that looked like the photos above turned out to be red, not pink.
PS. To be fair, one of the off-type bushes really impressed me. It pumped out an entire bucket of red, oval tomatoes with decent flavor, and it kept producing even after the cold September weather set in. We jokingly nicknamed it “Fregate-La-La” at home, since it looked like those Baltimore paste tomatoes you use for ketchup. I ended up saving seeds from that one 😳
Yeah, SibSad really loves to surprise its customers with “variety” in their seed packets.
Grew O-La-La in 2012, and then again in 2013 after reading the hype on this forum 😉 Both times, it got absolutely hammered by late blight 😞 Grew it outdoors both seasons. Yeah, the fruits are perfectly uniform, firm, and heavily clustered on the truss, but we barely even got to taste them because it was the very first plant in my garden to get sick. To be fair, I didn’t spray any chemical fungicides at all this year, and last year I sprayed way too late and not enough… 😳
My point is, the yield potential seems pretty solid, although personally I think the fruits are better suited for processing, but man is it a blight magnet. You absolutely have to spray this one with copper and stay on top of your fungicide schedule…
Full Summary: Plant, Yield, Taste, and Blight
- 🌿 Plant Habit: A semi-determinate variety that stays highly manageable outdoors, topping out around 4 ft (1.2 m). A major point of contention among growers is the horrific seed purity from the original vendor, SibSad. Expect to find multiple off-types in a single packet, ranging from small red cherries to elongated paste tomatoes.
- 📈 Yield & Resistance: When you get the true genetics, it is a heavy yielder that sets fruit vigorously even on the top trusses. The fruits are incredibly uniform round globes with a tiny nub, sitting right at 5-6 oz (150-180 g). However, disease resistance is terrible. It is widely considered a “blight magnet” and is often the first plant in the garden to succumb to late blight (phytophthora) if not heavily managed with fungicides.
- 👅 Taste: The authentic pink strain is highly praised for its excellent, sweet, and sugary flavor. Because of their firm texture and uniform size, they are considered fantastic dual-purpose tomatoes, working equally well fresh or processed into sauces.
