Quick Summary of Sigarovidnyi Malinovyi (Raspberry Cigar)
- 🌍 Origin: A commercial Russian variety introduced by the “Aelita” seed company. The name translates to “Raspberry Cigar” (or Crimson Cigar), perfectly describing its shape and color. Amazing seed saver fact from this thread: A grower successfully germinated seeds that had expired 13 years prior!
- 🌿 Plant Habit: The packet describes it as a regular determinate, but growers report it growing as a beautiful tree-type (rugose/shtamb) bush. It reaches about 65-85 cm (2-2.8 ft) in height.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Elongated, icicle or cigar-shaped pink/raspberry tomatoes weighing 70-80 g (2.5-2.8 oz). Huge bonus: Unlike many elongated paste tomatoes, growers report it is highly resistant to Blossom End Rot (BER) and fruit cracking.
- 👅 Flavor & Needs: While excellent for canning, fresh flavor depends heavily on soil nutrition. It has a high demand for Potassium; without it, the fruits can develop “yellow shoulders” and taste bland.
- ⏳ Maturity: Advertised as mid-season, but in less-than-ideal summers, it performs as a late-season variety (taking up to 150 days from seed to ripe fruit).
The seeds were from Aelita. Stated characteristics:
The bush turned out not regular, but tree-type (rugose/shtamb), very beautiful. The height matched, but it seemed to me that the bushes (I had two) didn’t terminate; they could have kept growing upward.
The yield is good, and, knock on wood, there was absolutely no blossom end rot, although other similar varieties had plenty of it.
The variety is promised to be mid-season, but for me (outdoors in open ground) it turned out to be mid-late, closer to late-season.
A noticeable drawback (besides not being early) is an increased need for potassium nutrition, which manifested in a rather bland taste and “yellow shoulders”, which almost no other variety had.
But with such beauty and yield, there is a desire to keep working with it:
More fruits:
I love these kinds of tomatoes for pickling/canning. Did you try them yourself?
Only if they ended up in some marinated mix, but mostly I canned them in apple juice.
Esme said:
Only if they ended up in some marinated mix, but mostly I canned them in apple juice.
In juice – it’s very delicious, but the stomachs in our family can’t handle that delicacy 😔
Galina, please orient me, how late is it? When did you sow it and when did the 1st tomato ripen 😳 at least approximately, so I know where it’s better to plant it 🌺
I soaked the seeds on March 6, they sprouted on March 18 (the seeds were valid until 12.2001, after all). I planted the seedlings outdoors in open ground on May 12.
There were definitely no ripe ones in July, and I didn’t write down exactly when the first one ripened. Apparently, the mass ripening was already happening with other varieties, so I didn’t notice.
Esme said:
I soaked the seeds on March 6… There were definitely no ripe ones in July…
Galya, so we should orient (roughly) around 150 days from sowing seeds to ripening, something like that?
Polenka, probably so. But keep in mind that the summer was mediocre at best.
Esme said:
Polenka, probably so. But keep in mind that the summer was mediocre at best.
Thanks, Galya. Who knows – maybe after acclimatization the timeframe will be reduced, at least by 10 days, which is quite a significant time for the harvest 🌺
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