Quick Summary of Pozzano F1
- 🌍 Origin: A commercial indeterminate hybrid bred by the famous Dutch seed company ENZA ZADEN BEHEER B.V. Highly sought after by professional and amateur growers alike.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate, tall (reaching 2-3 meters / 6.5-10 ft). Despite its height, growers note the plant is remarkably neat, well-foliated but not overly aggressive with suckers. Needs tall, sturdy support.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Red, elongated paste tomatoes. Interesting note on shape: The shape can be highly variable. Some growers get thick, blunt “sausages” with a tiny dimple at the bottom, while others (or even the same growers on higher trusses) get distinctly pepper-shaped fruits with a sharp, elongated nose (similar to Cornabel F1).
- 👅 Flavor & Texture: A classic, solid tomato flavor. Not overwhelmingly sweet (like a cherry tomato), but perfectly balanced. It is incredibly meaty and dense with no hollow cavities.
- 💡 Pro Tips for Growing & Usage: Extremely disease-resistant and immune to Blossom End Rot (BER). The fruits can hang on the vine long after ripening without softening or dropping. Processing comparison: When blanched, the thin skin peels off effortlessly. However, for sun-drying (dehydrating), growers note that Cornabel F1 is better because Pozzano F1 is slightly juicier.
A tall hybrid of Dutch selection from ENZA ZADEN BEHEER B.V. The plant is 2-3 m (6.5-10 ft) tall in the open ground. The tomato is pepper-shaped, dense, stores and transports well, relatively early.
In the open ground in the conditions of the southeast of Ukraine, it bears fruit well until full frosts and sustained cold weather, i.e., until early-mid November, depending on the year (early vs. late autumn). Good taste both fresh and canned. The yield is very high – stated to be up to 12 kg (26 lbs) per bush. I didn’t weigh the harvest while growing, but there were a lot of them and of a decent size.
Planted for the first time in 2020 – in general, I was as happy as an elephant after a bath. More than 100 liters of 1-3 liter jars were canned with exactly this variety, and at the moment, the stocks of these tomatoes are practically running out, although I dragged them to work for various occasions (my coworkers really asked specifically for these).
I will definitely plant it this year, if I can get the seeds. Practically no diseases at all.
In general, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it.
Among the downsides – it needs tall support and heavy feeding, but that’s probably not a downside, but a condition for harvesting a good crop. It pushes out suckers, but it’s tolerable. Plus, the seeds are expensive and come in branded commercial packaging of 250 or 500 seeds. Therefore, you have to buy them cooperatively (group buy), because if you buy ones repacked by local (Ukrainian internet shops) swindlers, they can scam you.
They say there is a similar hybrid Cornabel F1, but I haven’t tried it yet. In our isolated conditions, it’s not so easy to get seeds.
I planted Pozzano F1 this season for the first time, seeds from original professional packs from Zolushka’s Joint Purchase (group buy).
Two bushes sat in the far (third) bed of a polycarbonate greenhouse, on the edge. Care was the same as other tomatoes – fed three times per season with Nutrisol or Master at the root, watered as needed, shaded with white spunbond during the heat.
The bushes didn’t get sick with anything at all, they were neat, didn’t sprawl over half the greenhouse, well-foliated, there were not many suckers and they were not aggressive. There was absolutely no vershinka (Blossom End Rot). The tomatoes were all perfectly calibrated; for me, they were thick, even sausages, with a very small nose or a dimple at the bottom, dense, without hollows. The skin is thin. They hung on the clusters without getting soft or falling off, even if the stalk started to turn yellow. It set fruit right up until frosts, until I pulled the bushes out.
The taste is ordinary tomato, there was no special sweetness like Summer Sun, for example. But the tomato is tasty, great in salads with mayonnaise, it doesn’t overpower the taste with sweetness. I tried drying (dehydrating) it, it turned out well, but Cornabel is drier, so Cornabel is better for drying. Pozzano is juicier, you cut it and it drips.
I didn’t can them in jars, they are a bit too large for small jars, except maybe the very last ones on the upper clusters were smaller, but the bulk of the fruits were 10-11 cm (4-4.5 inches) in length. Only if you can them in three-liter (100 oz) jars…
I used fully ripened Pozzanos for lecho (pepper and tomato stew). I dipped the fruits in boiling water for a few seconds and then into cold well water, the thin skin peeled off easily without taking any flesh. When cooking, the flesh partially disintegrated into a puree on its own, I didn’t have to blend it. It will probably be good for juice; the shape allows you to put it through a juicer whole without cutting it into pieces.
I liked the hybrid very much. Excellent for processing, productive, convenient shape, disease resistance, and the ability to keep the harvest on the bush for a long time.
Regarding the shape of Pozzano fruits. There are two types of photos of this hybrid on the Internet – pepper-shaped matryoshkas with a long pointed nose, and thick even cylinders with a small dimple. I am completely confident in the authenticity of mine, since they are definitely original from the group buy. And if there is a long-nosed version of Pozzano that is also guaranteed from a professional pack without repacking, then it means these are variations of the norm.
I would like to see Pozzano from other forum members.
On 1/18/2021 at 20:57, Nataly said:
Regarding the shape of Pozzano fruits. There are two types of photos of this hybrid on the Internet – pepper-shaped matryoshkas with a long pointed nose, and thick even cylinders with a small dimple. I would like to see Pozzano from other forum members.
I had both shapes, and even on the same plant. The ones in the first clusters are plump with a small, almost unnoticeable nose, and the ones on the upper clusters are slightly smaller than the ones on the first clusters, but already with a pronounced nose and a pepper-like shape.
I didn’t bother so much with canning issues – the women dealt with that, but I think that in the variations Nataly mentions, they will also be very, very good.
Nataly, in what packaging did you buy the seeds – how many pieces?
On 1/18/2021 at 21:08, flytomat said:
I had both shapes, and even on the same plant…
I didn’t have a single fruit with a pronounced pepper shape and a long nose, they were all identical, like in the photo above. The Cornabel ones were pepper-shaped like that. Maybe it depends on the seed batch…
The seeds were from a Joint Purchase by @Zolushka, she buys professional commercial packs, I don’t know exactly how many seeds were in the original pack.
Nataly, seeds were brought to me from a Ukrainian internet shop. When I ordered, they said that professional packs come in 250 and 500 seeds… They repack them into smaller ones. I bought 2 packs of 25 seeds, the seeds are quite expensive after all. They were in small paper packets, and inside a small transparent plastic zip-lock bag – clearly a local repacking. But it’s okay – they grew normally.
This year I ordered a pack of 250 seeds (we decided to buy cooperatively in a group). They brought it yesterday. The packaging – a non-transparent bag, like foil, but more likely plastic that looks like foil. I’m a bit concerned that the packaging is from 2017, but the sellers warned me, I couldn’t find fresher ones. We’ll see how it grows.
Regarding the shape of the fruits – last year they clearly became pepper-shaped somewhere from the 3rd – 4th cluster and upwards. The first clusters were like “piglets” (blunt and fat), but still with a clear tail. Perhaps because I fed them heavily in May – June.
I liked that the color outside is like a standard tomato, but when you cut it – the flesh inside is darker – a beautiful rich color of a clearly well-ripened tomato.
On 1/20/2021 at 09:25, flytomat said:
I’m a bit concerned that the packaging is from 2017, but the sellers warned me, I couldn’t find fresher ones. We’ll see how it grows.
Tomatoes have good germination retention periods, I don’t think there will be any problems. And show us the results later, it’s interesting.