Quick Summary of Primadonna F1
- 🌍 Origin: A very popular early-season F1 hybrid available from several Russian and international seed companies (SibSad, Aelita, Seminis, Prestige).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Generally described as a compact or short indeterminate, growing around 1.3m to 2m (4.2–6.5 ft) in a greenhouse depending on feeding. It produces very few suckers, making it low-maintenance.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Medium-sized red fruits. Interestingly, fruit shape varies by seed producer! Some strains produce smooth, round fruits, while others produce fruits with a distinct little “beak” (pointy nose). They ripen evenly without hard green shoulders.
- 👅 Flavor & Yield: A heavy yielder that sets fruit very well even in high heat. Flavor reviews are mixed (as is typical for early hybrids). Some find it very tasty for an early tomato, while others call it “watery and bland.” However, its extreme firmness makes it absolutely perfect for processing and canning.
- 🛡️ Disease Resistance: Most growers report excellent resistance to diseases (including Late Blight), though a few outliers reported the opposite.
- 👨🍳 Bonus Recipe: This thread contains an authentic Russian recipe for Tatar-Style Green Tomato Salad. Perfect for using up unripe tomatoes at the end of the season!
I have “Primadonna” from Aelita. A successful discovery of the last season. Grew in the greenhouse, height about 1 m 30 cm (4.2 ft), had very few suckers. Early ripening, set fruit very well in the heat. The fruits are medium-sized, beautiful with a small pointy nose, and the taste was quite good for an early tomato.
Mary, when was it sown for seedlings, and when did you transplant it into the greenhouse?
Sown for seedlings in mid-March, transplanted into the greenhouse at the end of May.
Aleksandrov has a different version of it, so I figured it must be a hybrid. 😳
Mine is also a hybrid.
I also planted Primadonna hybrid last year. It made me very happy. I just don’t have photos—I wasn’t taking pictures yet last year. I planted dry seeds (without pre-soaking) on March 14th, and they all sprouted in 4 days. The seedlings were good and sturdy. Transplanted to the greenhouse on May 13th.
Granted, out of all the ones transplanted into the greenhouse, only one single plant survived 😳—my youngest daughter “helped” me; first she planted them together with me, and then when I wasn’t looking, she decided to pull them all out and replant them again 😡.
But on the bright side, the tomatoes from it were earlier than all the others, and this one single Primadonna plant didn’t catch Late Blight (Phytophthora) at all, compared to the other varieties in the greenhouse. Though, it was the only hybrid. So this year, Primadonna is the first candidate for planting.
Aksinya, who was the seed producer?
From SibSad (Siberian Garden). This year I will try planting seeds from both SibSad and Plazmennye Semena.
I planted Primadonna for several years. It can either be large, tall, and without a pointy nose, or a bit smaller with a pointy nose and about 1m 30cm (4.2 ft) tall. The first one is more impressive, but since these are hybrids, you don’t always manage to buy the “right” seeds!
Last year I planted Primadonna F1 from SibSad (the picture showed a pointy nose, but in reality, the nose is much less noticeable). I was very happy with the tomatoes: massive trusses, firm fruits, no green shoulders/hard core. They ripened entirely (they just turned burgundy-green, then red). I only had 3 bushes, but the harvest was massive.
When doing canning/preserves last summer, with many other varieties, by the time you cut off the green hard core and the cracks, only half the tomato is left. But these went into the jars entirely without waste. I was making a Tatar-style salad where the tomatoes need to be green, so I decided not to wait for them to ripen and used them for processing. I started cutting open the green-burgundy ones, and they were firm on the outside but ripe on the inside! I will definitely plant them for canning this year.
I had 2 seeds left, and bought some from Aelita, but I just noticed they look different (oblate). Mine grew to almost 2 meters (6.5 ft) (though all my tomatoes were giants, probably because I fed them frequently with weed tea fertilizer).
Valentina Vladimirovna, could you please write how you feed with weed tea? And could you share that Tatar recipe using Primadonna?
Maiya, sorry I didn’t answer right away. I just saw the question. I feed with weed tea just like everyone else: I steep weeds (ferment them) in a barrel and water the tomatoes with the extract once every two weeks (that’s probably considered frequent).
🥗 Authentic Tatar-Style Green Tomato Salad (Canning Recipe)
Yields: Approx. 7 liters
- 5 kg (11 lbs) green tomatoes
- 1 kg (2.2 lbs) onions
- 1 kg (2.2 lbs) carrots
- 1 kg (2.2 lbs) bell peppers
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 200g (7 oz) sugar
- 4 tablespoons salt
- 6 black peppercorns
- 5-6 bay leaves
Instructions:
1. Stirring rapidly, boil the vegetable oil with the salt and bay leaf for 5-10 minutes (the sugar might caramelize, so add half of it now, and pour the other half into the carrots when they release their juice).
2. Chop all ingredients (grate the carrots on a julienne grater, cut tomatoes into 4-6 wedges).
3. Stew by adding them to the pot in turns: carrots, after 15 mins add onions, after 15 mins add peppers, after 15 mins add tomatoes.
4. Simmer on low heat for 30 minutes, add 7 teaspoons of 70% vinegar essence (or equivalent standard vinegar), pack hot into sterilized jars, seal, flip upside down, and cover with a blanket until cool.
That is awesome to do with green tomatoes!!! 👍👍👍 You should have posted the recipe in the culinary section.
I was looking for a recipe that would use up a lot of tomatoes, and it turned out to be one of the best salads. Sweet and sour, highly recommended. We ate the whole batch before New Year’s.
But I didn’t like Primadonna F1 precisely because of the taste. I grew it outdoors in open ground in 2011 from Seminis seeds. It was very productive, beautiful, with such elegant trusses, but the taste was watery, and the color was an indistinct pale red.
It was one of the very first to catch Late Blight (Phytophthora). So what are people supposed to do after such contradictory reviews ??? 🙈 Only try it for yourselves!
Valentina Vladimirovna, thank you so much for the recipe! 📝
I bought Primadonna seeds from Prestige. I want to grow them in the greenhouse.
