Quick Summary of Temptation (Spokusa)
- 🌍 Origin & Name: A commercial variety originating from Ukraine/Eastern Europe. The name “Spokusa” directly translates to “Temptation” or “Seduction”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit (The Foliage Mystery): The true strain of this variety is a vigorous indeterminate (tall) vine with a very unique visual trait: it has unusually small, sparse leaves (wispy foliage). At first glance, the bush looks “transparent” or even sick, but this is a natural genetic trait. It produces massive, complex multiflora trusses.
- ⚠️ Seed Purity Warning: Forum discussions reveal that a popular commercial seed vendor (Legutko) released a heavily crossed “off-type” strain. If your plant stays under 1 meter (3 ft) and has normal leaves, you have the determinate off-type, which generally produces inferior, sour fruit.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Bright red, round cherry tomatoes growing in huge clusters.
- 👅 Flavor & Culinary Use: Highly debated depending on the seed source and climate. Grown well, the true strain is described as incredibly sweet with a rich “large summer tomato” aroma. The skins are thick, making this an absolute top-tier choice for whole-fruit canning, as they rarely crack in jars.
🍅 Have you grown this variety? Scroll down to add your review and photos in the comments below!
Real Grower Reviews & Photos
A fairly early cherry variety. It is best to prune and form the bush into 3-5 stems. It produces a literal wall of tomatoes. The fruits are very sweet, with the aroma of large summer tomatoes 😋
Here is my Spokusa:
Irina, how is the taste, and is it a firm tomato?
Alena said:
Irina, how is the taste, and is it a firm tomato?
Based on the results of 2014, it was chosen out of 12 different cherry varieties as the absolute best tasting: firm, sweet-and-sour, and juicy.
I just want to call it “Spokuha” (slang) 😃 😳
I always have a problem telling my elderly neighbor ladies the names of varieties. They didn’t go to grammar schools… they don’t know foreign languages, and they mercilessly butcher all the names into whatever they can pronounce.
Tell them the truth – you’ll lose a friendship.
I mean, how on earth are they going to remember something like Costoluto Genovese Luciano?? 😃
But this one I know… they’ll just call it “Kostochka” (Little Bone) and call it a day 😉
Wonderful cherry variety! I pruned it to three stems. The bush is very neat, the leaves do not cover or shade the fruit trusses, there is no need to prune the foliage off, and suckers grow very moderately. If you leave the bush unattended for a while, it won’t turn into a “dark forest.”
On three stems, I got 15 complex multiflora trusses. I topped the plant in early July to give those 15 trusses time to set fruit and grow.
Delicious! And the bush itself is simply a decoration for the greenhouse!
In general, this variety has taken up permanent residence in my garden.
Seeds were from Angelina.
Cherry “Spokusa” (I joke that it sounds like “s pokusa”, meaning “one bite”) 🙂 👍
An amazingly productive, trouble-free variety… It grew in the corner of the greenhouse, practically without any pruning – I didn’t remove the suckers at all, but the bush was never overcrowded. You can leave all the stems that form, the fruits manage to ripen completely on the plant. Fruiting is stretched out until the end of the season; even in September we were feasting on sweet, aromatic tomatoes… (towards the end they simply sun-dried right on the branches, like raisins) 😋
Natalya said:
Cherry “Spokusa” (I joke that it sounds like “s pokusa”, meaning “one bite”) 🙂
And here I was thinking that SPOKUSA translates from Ukrainian as “Temptation” or “Seduction”.
September 25, 2015. We completely fell in love with this variety.
Girls, how are these tomatoes for canning/preservation?
Does the skin split in the jars or not? 😉
No, they don’t split.
I planted 2 bushes of Spokusa this year. They took a long time to germinate. Then I pampered them as much as I could, but they grew literally in miniature, like a 1 to 10 scale compared to other cherry tomatoes. They look healthy though. I planted them out with the rest, pruning to 3 stems. They’ve grown a bit, started blooming, and fruit is setting. But the bushes are still miniature. Is something wrong with them, or is this a feature of the variety?
Tatyana said:
But the bushes are still miniature. Is something wrong with them, or is this a feature of the variety?
Tanya, good afternoon. Mine are also “skinny models” with tiny leaves, but they are very tall. In the garden bed next to the watermelons (where there is a lot of compost/humus) – they are much more vigorous and productive. Apparently, they just need a lot of heavy feeding.
My Spokusa (seeds from A.I. Kulik) is a full-fledged indeterminate, not flimsy at all, in open ground it reached 160 cm (5.2 ft – which is my height! 😃)
My 2 bushes of Spokusa this year are no more than 40 cm (16 inches) tall, while others are already over a meter. The trusses only have 6-8 tomatoes, smaller than a real cherry. They are already ripening. This is some kind of genetic degeneration of the variety. The seeds were from a reliable collector, too.
Irina, thank you for the seeds, wonderful cherries! 👍 👍 👍 I couldn’t photograph them looking as beautiful on the bush because I planted them too close together 😳, the neighboring bushes blocked the trusses. But they are absolutely loaded, the taste is excellent, and the trusses are huge 🧺
My Spokusa is also the size of a real cherry and the taste is just so-so, a bit sour. I won’t be repeating it.
I planted it outdoors in open ground. It wasn’t that productive for me. Apparently, it really prefers the greenhouse. The taste is a simple tomato flavor, not bland, but not sweet either. When you eat cherries, you really want them to be sweet. For me, the standard of taste is the Summer Sun variety.
Planted Spokusa for the first time. Indeed, when really sweet cherries are growing right next to it, this variety is not very popular for fresh eating. Canned in jars, it will probably be good.
I probably had the crossed off-type too. Need to check who the seeds were from.
The bush was short, grew in open ground. I will not grow this version again.
Lyuda, mine came straight from the commercial seed company (Legutko)… and it was complete garbage ))) They really messed something up with this variety’s genetics.
Lyudmila said:
The bush was short, grew in open ground. I will not grow this version again.
Lyuda, I didn’t grow it outdoors, but in the greenhouse for the second year in a row it delights me with both yield and taste. The bush is tall, over 2 meters (6.5 ft), and since the beginning of August I haven’t even pruned the suckers. My seeds were from Angelina (private collector).
galka68 said:
…and it was complete garbage )))
Well, minus one from my seed grow/wish list!
Nataliya said:
The bush is tall, over 2 meters, delights me with both yield and taste.
…And it’s back on the wish list!
By mid-summer, my bushes recovered and grew almost to the very roof, over 2 meters (6.5 ft) tall. They were covered with 10-15 gram cherries, complex multiflora trusses. Round, red, the skin is firm. The taste is good, sweetness is a 4 out of 5. It seemed a bit bland and “doughy” in texture to me. I want to give it another chance… but I think I prefer sweeter and larger ones 🍅.
And somewhere I had read that this variety was a determinate 😛
But it turned out to be very “indeterminate”, and by the time I realized it – it was too late… the bush was completely overgrown. As a result, it grew in a massive heap, however it wanted… I literally had to kick it out of the way with my feet when I needed to walk past it…
Grew in the greenhouse, about 1.7 meters (5.5 ft) tall. The bush is almost “transparent” (wispy), the leaves are unrealistically small; at first, I even thought it was sick. But it set fruit reliably. The truss is complex, lots of tomatoes, but they are incredibly tiny. Early, taste is pleasant. But overall, just a novelty to play with. I won’t be repeating it.
