Heirloom Tomato Varieties & Reviews | Tomat-Pomidor
Honest reviews of global tomato varieties from a 15-year-old growers community.
🍅 Quick take: Muchamiel (Tomate de Mutxamel) is a celebrated traditional heirloom from the Alicante province in southeastern Spain. It grows as an indeterminate, mid-season vine bearing flat, heavily ribbed red beefsteaks weighing 10.5-12.5 oz (300-350 g), distinguished by their hallmark green shoulders. When trialed in cool northern greenhouses, it yields well and produces exceptionally … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Orlinyi Klyuv (Eagle’s Beak) is a famous commercial Russian heirloom from Siberian Garden (SibSad). It is an indeterminate, early-to-mid season pink heart/beak-shaped tomato. Like many classic oxhearts, it has a very spindly, wispy (“weeping”) foliage habit that looks frail but pumps out massive yields of large fruits up to 1.3 lbs (600 … Read more
📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Royal Mantle (Korolevskaya Mantiya) 🌍 Origin: Sourced and popularized by Ukrainian breeder D. Terentiev. The Russian name translates to “Royal Mantle”. 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall). Strong, highly productive vines that perform exceptionally well in greenhouses but can also be grown successfully outdoors. It is known as an absolute workhorse variety. … Read more
📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Gruntovyi M-3 🌍 Origin: Bred by the legendary Soviet agronomist P.Ya. Saraev, famous for developing exceptionally cold-hardy and frost-tolerant tomato lines. The name translates roughly to “Outdoor M-3”. 🌿 Plant Habit: Determinate (bush). It stays very compact, usually growing to about 2 ft (60 cm) tall in open ground. It requires … Read more
📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Appetitnyi (Appetizing) 🌍 Origin: A commercial variety from the Russian seed company Siberian Garden (SibSad). The name translates perfectly to “Appetizing” or “Mouthwatering”. 🌿 Plant Habit: It behaves as a semi-determinate or a compact indeterminate. Outdoors in the open garden, it usually stops around 80-100 cm (31-40″). Inside a poly greenhouse, … Read more
Quick Summary of Aces High 🌍 Origin: A rare dark cocktail tomato. In the Russian seed market, it became famous due to a hilarious translation error: the first person to import it used Google Translate, resulting in “High Aces” (as in playing cards: Tuzy Vysokie). Growers later pointed out it’s actually named after the famous … Read more
Quick Summary of Fedora 🌍 Origin: An heirloom variety circulated among European collectors. These specific seeds were sourced from a grower in Germany in 2015. 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall-growing). Shows moderate resistance to Leaf Mold (Cladosporium), rated a 3 out of 5 by growers. 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Heart-shaped (oxheart) tomatoes that exhibit prominent “green … Read more
Quick Summary of Santa Klaus (Santa Claus) 🌍 Origin: This thread reveals a classic seed mystery! There are actually two distinct versions of the Santa Klaus (Santa Claus) tomato circulating in Russia. One is a commercial release from the “Sibsad” seed company, while the other is a treasured family heirloom from the Nizhny Novgorod region. … Read more