📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Banan Rozovyi (Pink Banana)
- 🌍 Origin: A commercial Russian variety available from several seed companies, including Aelita and Siberian Garden (SibSad).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. Like many elongated paste tomatoes, it has a distinct “weeping” or wispy foliage. As a young seedling, the tops can twist and vine aggressively, which is a normal trait for this variety.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Pink, elongated plum or banana-shaped paste tomatoes. While packets often claim a weight of 3.5-4 oz (100-120g), many growers report massive fruits reaching up to 14 oz (400g). They transition from a grayish-purple color to a light pink when fully ripe. Very crack-resistant.
- 👅 Flavor & Use: Incredibly sweet, meaty, and juicy. It requires a lot of sun to develop its famous sugar-sweet flavor; if grown in heavy shade, it can turn out bland.
- ⚠️ Grower’s Note: Susceptible to Blossom End Rot (BER) early in the season, so have your calcium (dolomite lime/gypsum) ready. Also, ignore the seed packets that claim it has a “long shelf life”—it doesn’t keep for very long.
The seed packet promised 3.5-4 oz (100-120 g), but I ended up growing this absolute monster, which I am super happy about… 👍 Here it is sliced open… the maters are incredibly tasty—meaty, juicy, and sweet… and on top of that, a fantastic size 🙌.
This is what we looked like on July 1st… and this is from a week earlier..
My Pink Banana.
07.26.2014 | 07.10.2014
Tasty, juicy.
Edited July 12, 2014 by Nadine
It’s a leader for me too. Grew very weirdly, a twisty/vining bush, but turned out totally killer. We picked 3 trusses clean, now it’s filling out trusses 4 and 5. We’ve been eating them for a month, just a wonderful tomato. Here is a big one and a small one. Before turning light pink, it transitions through this grayish-purple color. The variety is just sugar sweet! Saved a bunch of seeds, definitely planting it again.
Oksana, Nadya, ladies, could you tell me where you originally got your Pink Banana seeds from?
Ira, Irina58 sent me a few seeds. I don’t know where she originally got them, gotta ask her.
Girls, forgive an old lady’s memory, Pink Banana is from Aelita seed company, the rest were from Udachnye Semena. 😳
Irisha, I got you covered on the Bananas.
Alena Latviya:
photo-
I grew mine from the exact same packet! They definitely lied/jumped the gun about the “good shelf life” though.. 😄 but the original shape is dead on.. 👍 😂
Dragging this post over from the “Wishlist” thread, it belongs here 🙂
Zulfiya:
Alena, the photo of Pink Banana in the catalog and the flavor description sound a lot like my beloved Pink Flamingo (Ukrainian plum). I’ll plant them side by side and check the maturity dates. Is Aelita’s PB prone to cracking? 📝 …
I’ll answer here since the question was in the wishlist section. It doesn’t crack, doesn’t split. The fruits are large, the first ones are about 5-7 oz (150-200g), the later ones get bigger, up to 14 oz (400g). Very easy to identify the variety—as a seedling, it acts like a vine, twisting its tops like many sausage/icicle types do, but the plant is sturdy.
Planted them out in late April, these photos are right before May 1st— The leaves on the teenagers are elongated and have a kinda specific structure.
Right before June 1st, you can really see the specific foliage here—
Mid-June— And then the fruits started rolling in 🙂
I had 1 fruit with BER (Blossom End Rot) in early June. I gave it a single dolomite lime tea drench, and it never came back 🙂 Wasn’t affected by any other diseases.
Ladies, did anyone grow PB this year? Oksanochka, did you happen to save any seeds from that giant you grew last year?
Tanya, I grew Pink Banana this year. Absolutely loved the variety. The seeds were from Oksanochka. Huge thanks to her! 🙌 🌺
The shape is definitely not very “banana-like” on mine, but it’s tasty.
Planted one bush this year, though it got stuck in the most shaded-out corner of the garden. Pruned it to 2 stems. Showed itself as a very heavy yielder. The fruits are beautiful, decent size. Works great for freezing. But the flavor on mine was completely bland. I suspect it’s because of the lack of sun. Seeds from Siberian Garden (SibSad).
