📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Verlioka F1
- 🌍 Origin: An older, classic commercial F1 hybrid from Russia. While some modern growers consider it outdated, it has a fiercely loyal following among veteran gardeners for its absolute reliability.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Determinate. The seed packet claims it reaches 6.5 ft (2 m), but real-world growers note it usually terminates (tops out) around 4-5 feet (1.3-1.5 m). It is highly recommended to leave a backup sucker in case the main stem terminates early.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Perfect, smooth little red baseballs. Very uniform in size, weighing about 2.8-3.5 oz (80-100 g). They have thick, dense walls, making them top-tier for canning and pickling.
- 👅 Flavor: Like many older commercial early hybrids, the taste is average or slightly tart early in the season. However, if left on the vine until late fall to slightly overripen, they get surprisingly sweet.
- 🛡️ Disease Resistance: Outstanding. Growers specifically note its high resistance to Cladosporium (Tomato Leaf Mold) and TMV (Tobacco Mosaic Virus).
Description from the seed packet: Early-ripening hybrid for greenhouse/protected growing. Determinate plant, medium branching, up to 6.5 feet (2 m) tall. Fruits are oblate, smooth, red, dense, weighing 2.8-3.2 oz (80-90 g). High taste qualities. All-purpose use. Valued for high yield and marketability, earliness, uniform fruit set even in low light conditions, and resistance to TMV.
Thread author: evgenii97531
My dad’s absolute favorite variety, he’s been planting it for at least 10 years 🙂 or more.
It never hits 6.5 ft (2 m), it tops out (terminates) at about 4-5 feet (1.3-1.5 m).
You gotta prune the suckers, but definitely leave a backup sucker just in case it decides to terminate early.
We usually prune it to 2 main stems.
The maters are little baseballs around 2.8-3.5 oz (80-100 g), taste is average, but they have thick walls which makes them great for pickling.
Highly disease resistant. By the time we are yanking out the other plants because of heavy Leaf Mold (Cladosporium), this one only has a few random spots on it.
No photos 🤷♀️
My favorite little mater. Even if it’s not the tastiest one out there, it always produces a solid crop, and the tomatoes are perfectly uniform. I’ve been planting it for exactly 23 years.
I like ’em too. A bit tart, but early. Here is a bush in mid-June, we already ate two off of it.
kiminok wrote:
I like ’em too. A bit tart, but early.
Back in 2010 I left them hanging in the greenhouse all the way until September. I was almost ready to give up on this variety because it was quite tart early in the summer. But I tried one in September and it was super sweet, just slightly overripe. Granted, that was a terrible year 😠 with all the wildfires.
Bought seeds and planted it again this year, 🙂 we’ll see how it does…
When I was a kid visiting my grandma in Rostov, I used to eat maters straight off the bush instead of fruit. Even though we had plenty of fruit 😂 my hand just naturally reached for the tomatoes. Even the unripe ones at the breaker stage.
Planted Verlioka in the greenhouse this year. The bushes (2 of them) went completely vegetative (all vine, no mater), very few fruits, they are tiny, huge gaps between trusses, and they just started blushing 3 days ago.
I couldn’t resist, pulled one off at the breaker stage and now I know what variety my grandma grew 😋. I mean, maybe it wasn’t exactly this one, but the taste is exactly that childhood memory. Naturally, I’m gonna plant it again.
This hybrid is pretty old, the genuine original version probably doesn’t even exist anymore. It was way too strictly a greenhouse variety. I think those who used to grow it should look for something newer and open-pollinated (non-hybrid). Unlike cucumbers, there really isn’t much point to F1 hybrid tomatoes, if there’s any benefit at all, and open-pollinated seeds are just cheaper.
