📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Dusya Krasnaya (Red Dusya)
- 🌍 Origin: A Russian commercial variety, famously sold by the Siberian Garden (SibSad) seed company.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Officially listed as a mid-sized plant (3-5 feet), but many growers report it behaving like a sturdy tree-type dwarf or semi-determinate, often staying under 3-4 feet when grown outdoors.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Classic red plum/oval shaped paste tomatoes. They are firm, meaty, and contain very few seeds. Average weight is typically 3.5-7 oz (100-200 g), with early fruits occasionally getting larger.
- 👅 Flavor & Use: Excellent for fresh eating, but truly shines as a processing and canning tomato due to its dense, meaty texture. It also has a good shelf life.
- 💡 Grower Secret: This variety is widely believed to be identical to another Russian tomato called Daryonka, simply repackaged under a different name.
Description from the seed packet: A mid-season variety for greenhouses and temporary hoop houses. Plant height is 3.2-5 feet (1-1.5 m). The first flower truss forms above the 7-9th leaf, and subsequent ones every 3 leaves. Fruits are uniform, firm, oval-plum shaped, meaty, with few seeds and excellent taste. Each truss sets up to 6 beautiful fruits with an average weight of 5.3-7 oz (150-200 g), though the very first ones can reach up to 12.3 oz (350 g). The variety is great for fresh eating and absolutely perfect for home cooking and canning.
Photos by Yanina.
I grew Dusya outdoors in open ground last year. The height topped out at about 27 inches (70 cm). It’s a high yielder, showed great disease resistance, and tasted really good. 🎩
Here is what my Dusya looked like:
(The one on the top left is not Dusya 🤭)
Due to my poor care and planting it out late, my Dusya grew quite short. I definitely need to try growing it again.
I really liked this variety; I grew it for 2 seasons. Outdoors in a sunny spot, the bushes didn’t get taller than 3 feet (0.9 m), very well-behaved plants that didn’t take over the bed. There were 6-7 fruits per truss. The tomatoes are delicious both fresh and canned, and they store quite well.
Dusya Krasnaya. For me, it grew as a sturdy tree-type (dwarf) plant. It was from a store-bought packet by Siberian Garden (SibSad)*. And then there is a variety called Daryonka, which Galya Esme sent me. They are exactly the same variety. Even the photo Siberian Garden uses on the packets is identical. So for me, it will always just be Daryonka. 😘
I grew it in 2018 outdoors in partial shade. I pruned it to 2 main stems, and the plant height was about 4 feet (1.2 m). The fruits are oval-shaped and red, weighing 3.5-5.3 oz (100-150 g). They are quite firm. Excellent for canning and processing. The yield was pretty decent.
Edited January 3, 2020 by Katrinka
*Siberian Garden (SibSad): Vera notes that “Dusya Krasnaya” and “Daryonka” are identical. This is a very common frustration in the Russian seed market! Large commercial seed companies, most notably Siberian Garden (SibSad) and Aelita, frequently take an established, popular heirloom variety and repackage it under a brand new, catchy name to boost sales. Experienced growers on forums often do “grow-outs” side-by-side to expose these duplicates!
