Siberian Early (Sibirskiy Skorospelyi) Heirloom Tomato Review

Description from the seed packet:

A very early, determinate variety for open ground. Plant height is 40-50 cm (16-20 inches), fruits are oblate, bright red, weighing up to 120 g (4.2 oz). Recommended for fresh consumption and processing into tomato products. For Siberians, the variety is attractive because of the opportunity to enjoy fresh tomatoes ripening outdoors in open ground as early as July.

Photo author: gggalina

Girls, who grew it — how does it taste and what dates did you sow it? Is it worth planting?

We received the seeds for the first time on May 5, 2013, and planted them immediately. The yield was 2.2 kg (4.8 lbs) per bush. The first small tomatoes managed to turn red on the bush, and the rest ripened normally indoors off the vine without any losses. The taste is average, 4 out of 5 points.

Two years ago I planted Sibirskiy Skorospelyi hoping for an early harvest. The variety turned out to be not very early, but not late either — mid-season. Some other varieties, like Sanka, ripened much earlier. I didn’t like the taste — the fruits were a bit bland with a slight sourness.

Girls, thank you! Minus one competitor from my grow list…

I want to stand up for this variety. It is old, proven, suitable for Siberian conditions, early, productive, and unpretentious.

Yes, its taste is just regular tomato, it’s certainly no fancy exotic heirloom. But I can’t say it’s sour either.
By consistency — the fruits are meant for salads, they are juicy. They make a very tasty salad when the tomato juice mixes with sour cream )))
They are good for juicing and processing. I haven’t tried them for canning/pickling whole, but probably not, the skin is tender. The downside is that they don’t store for long, but in our house, they don’t sit around anyway.

I don’t sow it earlier than mid-March, there is no point, it will have plenty of time anyway.

Information on the Sibirskiy Skorospelyi variety:

Origin: A variety from the West-Siberian Vegetable and Potato Selection Experimental Station, obtained by crossing varieties Hybrid 114 x Hybrid 534/1 with subsequent individual selection. Zoned and registered in 1959.

Earliness: Early-ripening variety, fruit ripening occurs 98-108 days after full emergence of seedlings.

Yield: Fruit weight 62-114 grams (2-4 oz), yield up to 5.5 kg per square meter.

Plant description: Sibirskiy Skorospelyi is a determinate plant, 30-48 cm (12-19 inches) tall. Fruits are oblate and round, slightly ribbed, red, number of seed locules 5-12. The flavor qualities of fresh fruits are satisfactory (I would argue with this official rating, though). This tomato variety is valued for stable yields in various regions of the country and earliness. They are used for fresh consumption.

Another issue is what seed vendors actually pack in the sachets, as selection is often not maintained. But if you save seeds yourself, selecting only from the most productive plants, the variety will be worthy!

I sowed it with some skepticism — it’s an old variety, and the stated start of fruiting at around 95-105 days doesn’t really align with the “early ripening” in its name, especially now when there are ultra-early varieties claiming just 80-90 days until the first red tomatoes… However, despite my initial bias, I noted that even in the seedling stage, two varieties were the first to bloom for me, and one of them was precisely Sibirskiy Skorospelyi.

Overall, on the plus side — it really is early (how many people actually manage to pick red tomatoes from new varieties 80 days after sprouting? In reality, it still takes those same 95-100 days for most people anyway). Another plus is beautiful fruits, quite large for such an early and short-growing tomato. Good tomato flavor, at least for me it’s definitely tastier than any store-bought ones… 😋

The only serious minus is that it produces a LOT of suckers, and quite often 2 of them shoot out simultaneously from a single leaf axil. You really have to keep a close eye on this comrade… 😲 To paraphrase the leader of all times and peoples [Stalin] — prune, prune, and prune again… 😄 But in all fairness, it doesn’t forget to bloom and set fruit either 😳

Quote by Katerina:

…I planted Sibirskiy Skorospelyi hoping for an early harvest. The variety turned out to be not very early, but not late either — mid-season. … I didn’t like the taste — the fruits were a bit bland with a slight sourness.

It performed exactly the same way for me.

You can’t call it early at all. By the time it ripened, there were already plenty of other ripe tomatoes. And since its appearance wasn’t impressive, I didn’t even bother to taste it (I just threw it away 🤐).

Of course, I can’t guarantee that what was in my seed packet was truly “Sibirskiy Skorospelyi” 😉

This was my first experience planting tomatoes. In the cold summer of 2015, they only started turning red on the bush in August, even in the greenhouse. Maybe I did something wrong. I sowed them in late March. Planted them both outdoors in open ground and in the greenhouse.

Irina, last year I also planted tomatoes for the first time, specifically Sibirskiy Skorospelyi and Moskvichka. Planted them in a polycarbonate greenhouse.

Moskvichka turned red a week earlier. I didn’t like either this one or that one. The yield seemed okay for a first-timer, but my neighbor had about 2 times more tomatoes on her tall (indeterminate) varieties.

This year I put up another greenhouse and I’ll only be planting tall ones.

And more varieties, around 50 across 2 greenhouses. We’ll try them out and then decide based on the results which ones to keep and which ones to… replace. I highly recommend reading the forum, or better yet, come to the meetups. I learned a lot about my tomato-growing mistakes, and man, did I have a lot of questions… and I got answers to all of them 👏. Here, you either learn or quit before it’s too late 🏃‍♂️. Everyone here is a sick person 😄 we all need more, and tastier. It’s like an epidemic.

I won’t grow it anymore. Didn’t like it. Bland, not tasty.

I didn’t like the variety. Planted it both outdoors and in the greenhouse. Outdoors, the taste was still somewhat okay, but in the greenhouse, it was inedible. It didn’t impress me with anything. I wouldn’t classify it as early either, more like mid-season. Those early Polish determinates surpassed it in all parameters so much that I threw the seeds away and will not plant it again.

Sowed on March 6, moved outdoors under a canopy on May 28, they started producing from July 24.
To date, I’ve picked about 2 kg (4.4 lbs) per bush.

Juicy, moderately soft, the taste is sweet-and-sour and rich.
I will repeat it next year, hoping it performs even better. This summer, my tomatoes are lagging almost a month behind.

Sowed March 29, planted outdoors May 5. The first fruits ripened on July 19. Red, small-to-medium, oblate with a regular flavor and a bit of sourness. They all went into processing. I won’t repeat it, as they aren’t super-early (for comparison, Kazabalykskiy Superearly ripened on July 7). By this time, tasty sweet varieties had already started ripening, so there was no need for this kind of tomato.

I want to stand up for this variety. It is valuable not for its taste or earliness, but for its unpretentiousness to growing conditions. This is my third year growing it. All three years have been abnormal in terms of temperature. Either there is no summer at all, or wild swings from freezing to heat.

This variety overwhelms you with a harvest. I pick a decent-sized crate off a single bush.

It sets fruit in heat and cold. It aggressively produces suckers, but if I have space, I just pinch them off above the first flower truss. The trusses ripen almost simultaneously. After harvesting, I just pull the bushes out.

The taste for salads is excellent even without any sun. It ripens well indoors and stores nicely.

So far, I haven’t found a replacement for it.

I grow it in a polycarbonate greenhouse, but in our two-week-long summers, nothing grows without one.

And yes, I’ve encountered mislabeled seeds (not true to type). As a result, I sowed old seeds from a plain white packet and in the autumn, I saved my own seeds from the most productive bushes.

Edited February 14, 2020 by Elena

Sibirskiy Skorospelyi really bailed me out once too. One time in early June, after a frost, half of my outdoor tomatoes died. I had to go to the market and buy whatever was available. And the only thing they had was Sibirskiy Skorospelyi. And even then, it was a miracle I managed to buy it, as almost no one was selling tomato seedlings anymore.

Later on, those little bushes of this variety just buried me in a harvest. They stood there like Christmas trees, completely covered in fruit. Yes, the taste of the tomatoes is quite average. But on the other hand, it is an unpretentious, hard-working variety.