Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zones 4-6 Experience)
Indeterminate, mid-season salad variety with potato leaf foliage. The fruits are large, meaty pink beefsteaks with very good, well-balanced flavor and nice sweetness. Fuss-free, dependable producer.
Grew it outdoors in open ground. Seeds came from T. Kouchnareva. Definitely giving this one another run.
Grew this variety for a second season, but this time inside the greenhouse. It didn’t live up to the stellar flavor it showed back in 2015.
Both sweetness and acidity were present, but the overall taste came out fairly plain and middle-of-the-road. Could be that this variety simply does much better out in the open garden. Benchmarking it for now.
Elena, might have just been an off year for weather. Felt like a lot of varieties tasted washed out compared to previous seasons.
Wonderful variety. Pink beefsteaks with tender, thin skins. Out in the open garden beds, it completely loaded up with fruit. Juicy, lots of seeds.
Full Summary: Plant, Yield and Outdoor vs Greenhouse Performance
- 🌿 Plant & Heritage: American family heirloom preserved through North American seed savers. Grows as an indeterminate vine sporting broad potato-leaf (PL) foliage. Low-maintenance and adaptable.
- 📈 Yield & Growing Method: Mid-season maturity. Heavy producer, particularly when grown outdoors in full sun. In open-ground beds, vines consistently load up with large, oblate pink beefsteaks with delicate, thin skins.
- 👅 Flavor Dynamics: Highly responsive to direct solar exposure. Grown in open ground, it displays a rich, well-balanced old-school sweetness. Under enclosed greenhouse conditions during cooler or cloudy seasons, the flavor can wash out into a plain, mild profile.
- 🌎 Who Reviewed It: ElenaN (Kostroma, Zone 4) across multi-year open-ground and greenhouse trials, Galina P. (Moscow Region, Zone 4), and Irina Volga (Volgograd, sunny Zone 6).
