Quick Summary of Tamara
- 🌍 Origin: A Russian commercial heirloom variety. It is well-documented in North America via Tatiana Kouchnareva’s TOMATObase.
- 🌿 Plant Habit (The Det vs. Indet Debate): There is some conflicting information regarding its growth habit. Commercial Russian vendors (like Redko) list it as a determinate, and some growers report it stopping around 1.5 meters (5 ft). However, seeds sourced directly from Tatiana Kouchnareva’s collection grow as true, vigorous indeterminates.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large, red, oblate (flattened) beefsteaks. They are very impressive in size.
- 👅 Flavor & Texture: Highly rated for flavor! It consistently wins top marks for being very sweet, incredibly meaty, and juicy.
- 📈 Yield & Performance: An absolute champion in yield. Growers note that it produces a massive flush of huge fruits early in the season, slows down slightly in the middle, and then surprisingly pumps out a second massive flush of giant tomatoes in the late autumn before the frost.
- 🛡️ Crack Resistance: Performs very well in fluctuating moisture conditions. Even in years when almost all other varieties split and crack, Tamara shows excellent resistance to severe cracking.
I ordered this variety from Redko.
The description from the website: determinate, mid-season, oblate (flat-round), large, high-yielding, red, sweet.
Mine grew in the greenhouse. It took first place for taste, size, and yield. At the beginning of the summer, it set a massive bunch of very large fruits, all near the bottom of the stem. Then it set fruit one by one, but those tomatoes were also large. By autumn, I have no idea where they came from, but suddenly there were heavy clusters of tomatoes hanging at the bottom again! And right up under the greenhouse roof as well. They were enormous, exactly the same size as the ones in the summer. Both of my bushes behaved exactly like this.
Their height was about one and a half meters (5 ft). It is early; they were among the very first to ripen.
This year, absolutely all my varieties cracked. But Tamara cracked the least. There were a few cracks, but not many, they weren’t large, and they didn’t ooze juice.
I got the seeds for this variety from Tatiana Kouchnareva. For me, it is an indeterminate, very high-yielding. The fruits are flat-round beefsteaks, very tasty, and meaty. I only managed to find this one photo; I didn’t get a chance to photograph them when fully ripe, as it kept fruiting right up until the cold weather hit. I loved it very much!
More Photos from Our Forum Members
