Tarasenko Hybrid No. 2 Tomato: Reviews, Yield & Photos

Tarasenko Hybrids (various): HYBRID 2. Vigorous, relatively cold-tolerant. Fruits have dense, tasty flesh, shaped like a blunt cone with a drawn-out pointed tip (Budenovka hat style), orange-red in color, weighing 1.8-2.5 oz (50-70 g), and are excellent keepers. The trusses are complex (multiflora) and heavily fruited, with 30-40 tomatoes per truss weighing a total of 4.4-6.6 lbs (2-3 kg). You can eat them fresh, can them, or store them for a long time to ripen indoors. You’ll get the best harvests if you prune it to 2-3 stems — up to 33-44 lbs (15-20 kg) of fruit per plant. It’s a good idea for the gardener to thin out the trusses by pinching off weak buds and blossoms. (Credits: Nadine, Nadia). Photo by Pomidoroved.

I grew Tarasenko 2 this year. I wasn’t a fan because I don’t like tough tomatoes; they felt hard and “woody” both when eaten fresh and when pickled.

Russi (Anna) said:
I grew Tarasenko 2 this year. I wasn’t a fan because I don’t like tough tomatoes; they felt hard and “woody” both when eaten fresh and when pickled.

I totally disagree! They are very tasty both raw and straight out of the canning jar. They definitely aren’t woody, but they don’t turn to mush either.

vikysia said:
I totally disagree! They are very tasty both raw and straight out of the canning jar. They definitely aren’t woody, but they don’t turn to mush either.

Can confirm. Super tasty both fresh and canned. 😄 👍

Grew it in a greenhouse pruned to 2 stems, which was a big mistake; I should have stuck to a single leader. A very heavy-yielding variety. And on top of that, it’s tasty. Definitely a candidate for my grow list next year. 🙂

Juicy, sweet, tasty, and a heavy-yielding variety. Great for canning and slicing into salads 👍

I also grew this tomato this year. Very high yield, great disease resistance, but the flavor was nothing to write home about, just average.

I really loved the variety too! Extremely productive and great for winter canning!

I liked Hybrid 2 👍 😲 😋 Thank you, Ivochka 😘
I pruned it to a single stem. The first truss pumped out a massive amount of fruit, but it didn’t set as well higher up. Maybe I didn’t feed it enough 🤷
It turned out to be an earlier-season ripener than Yubileyny Tarasenko (Tarasenko’s Jubilee).
The trusses absolutely must be tied up, otherwise they kink and snap under their own weight.
The tomatoes are great all-purpose slicers — good for fresh eating and pickling. I grew it right next to Anna German.

Zolushka (Olya) said:
I liked Hybrid 2 👍 😲 😋 Thank you, Ivochka 😘
I pruned it to a single stem. The first truss pumped out a massive amount of fruit, but it didn’t set as well higher up. Maybe I didn’t feed it enough 🤷
It turned out to be an earlier-season ripener than Yubileyny Tarasenko.
The trusses absolutely must be tied up, otherwise they kink and snap under their own weight.
The tomatoes are great all-purpose slicers — good for fresh eating and pickling. I grew it right next to Anna German.

Olya, how does it actually differ from Yubileyny Tarasenko? I feel like we are all trading the exact same variety around the forum! Even looking at the weight — I checked your Yubileyny and Hybrid 2, they are almost identical! But I remember growing them back in the 90s 😮, and they were very different in size — at least twice the difference. It’s a real shame my saved seeds from those years didn’t germinate… otherwise I would have shown you… 📝

Edited February 1, 2017 by Drosera

I agree, Ninul, mine turned out exactly the same… 🙁

Ninulia (Nina) said:
Olya, how does it actually differ from Yubileyny Tarasenko? I feel like we are all trading the exact same variety around the forum! Even looking at the weight — I checked your Yubileyny and Hybrid 2, they are almost identical! But I remember growing them back in the 90s 😮, and they were very different in size — at least twice the difference. It’s a real shame my saved seeds from those years didn’t germinate… otherwise I would have shown you… 📝

The main difference is that Hybrid 2 started ripening earlier, and it’s slightly smaller: H2 is 2.1-2.8 oz (60-80 g), while Yubileyny is around 3.5 oz (100 g), but overall they do look very similar.

I liked H2 better. It’s a much more manageable size for canning jars 😄

I guess the seed lines have just mutated or gotten crossed over time 🤷

I still have seeds saved from my 1990s plantings. I once counted up to 70 fruits on a single truss. I really love the flavor, it has that real, old-fashioned fragrant tomatoey taste. I also have Yubileyny Tarasenko. I want to plant both this year just to check how well they match the original catalog descriptions.

My Hybrid T. 2 was also earlier than Yubileyny T. The fruit shape was identical, but the size was different — Hybrid 2 is smaller, making it perfect for jars, while Yubileyny T. throws larger fruits that don’t fit into jars very well 🙂 And the bush itself looked different from the get-go 🙂 I kept waiting for Yubileyny to take off and grow tall like other Tarasenko varieties, but it grew slowly, only reaching 4 ft (1.2 m) out in the open ground, no higher. Meanwhile, Hybrid 2 shot right up to almost 6.5 ft (2 m) and was a much heavier yielder for me.

Tomochka, that means your Yubileyny probably grew truer to type, especially if the fruits were too big for canning jars… I just remember that its yield was supposed to be absolutely insane 😲, I remember a single truss draping over 4 neighboring plants!

Ninulia (Nina) said:
Tomochka, that means your Yubileyny probably grew truer to type, especially if the fruits were too big for canning jars… I just remember that its yield was supposed to be absolutely insane 😲, I remember a single truss draping over 4 neighboring plants!

Ninul, I wish I knew if I have the real deal or not 🤷 I also completely dropped the ball on my care regimen for it early on 🙁 I plan to grow it again and will try my best to get a proper harvest 🙂

Looks like I’ve got this one too.

My Tarasenko Hybrid 2 threw less massive trusses than Yubileyny Tarasenko. The fruits weighed around 3.5 oz (100 g). The yield was solid. Flavor leans toward the sweet side. The plant reached up to 6.5 ft (2 m) tall in my greenhouse.

It hasn’t ripened yet, so I don’t know the taste, but it’s a handsome fellow !!! 📝 Not a single diseased leaf (knock on wood). It’s my first year growing in a poly tunnel, so I finally have something to proudly show my husband (he was totally against buying it) — such massive trusses, it didn’t let me down. Even if I don’t like the taste, I will always grow it for the looks!

But I do spray with fungicides using Mikhail’s schedule. Some of my other varieties are already coming down with something 🤷

No Lena, you will definitely like the taste. They truly have a nice sweetness to them. They are delicious in jars, but you shouldn’t crack the jars open until closer to the New Year. By then, the brine has enough time to fully penetrate their thick skin. I grow them every year. Wonderful little tomatoes. The trusses aren’t huge this season, but that’s fine… every year is different.

Here is how my H2 turned out, seeds from Alyona Andreeva. She originally got them from someone on the forum. Trained to 1 stem on a trellis right up until the frost hit. It would have kept producing if I hadn’t yanked it out during fall cleanup. Taste — 5/5! But the trusses seem simple, not multiflora?! I liked it very much, I’ll definitely repeat it.

🙂 Tatyana, what interesting trusses your H2 threw out. And pretty large 👏 . For some reason, I only got these little guys.

I feel like Tatyana’s is not Hybrid 2. In her photo, the tomatoes are slightly elongated, whereas the hybrid’s are completely round at the base, plus they have that little pointy tip 😉. And the true trusses of Hybrid 2 are unmistakable — wild, sprawling multiflora trusses.

It’s a solid, productive variety, has a long harvest window, and the taste is a solid 5/5. Both years I grew it out in a hoop house. Last year we flew with the kids to Crete for a holiday, got back on October 20th, and the next day went out to check the tomatoes. The temperature was 35°F (2°C), freezing cold. Right there in the garden, our kids ate these ice-cold, beautiful, firm tomatoes. The cold didn’t ruin the flavor at all. The youngest kept coming up and saying: “I want more.” I had to explain that the other little ones needed to hang on the vine a bit longer to ripen up.
The bloom of one sprawling truss on 9/30/16, and both ripe and developing fruits on a single truss. Seeds were from Nadine out in Volgograd.

Tarasenko Hybrid No. 2. What’s old is new again. I love the variety for its fuss-free nature. You just need to give it plenty of space, and it will put on an absolute show.

The trusses are wildly abundant, but my plant was sitting in blazing, full sun and dropped quite a few blossoms. Beautiful and tasty though)

I love this variety. Those crazy multiflora trusses are just a sight to behold. The fruits are firm, perfect for canning. Good flavor.

Edited December 31, 2019 by Katrinka

I refreshed my seed stock this year and grew it outside in open ground. It turned out much more productive outdoors (we had a stellar summer) than it did in my greenhouse back in 2017. In the greenhouse, it tended to drop its blossoms.

It needs lots of room to roam, the growth is totally indeterminate (unlimited).

Edited November 11, 2021 by OlyaSashina