📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Vovchik
- 🌍 Origin: A commercial variety from Russia/Ukraine. The name is an affectionate diminutive for Vladimir (Little Vova).
- 💡 Editor’s Note (The Famous Mix-Up): This thread is a classic example of a happy accident. The official commercial seed packets describe Vovchik as a regular round/oblate tomato. However, a massive batch of seeds released to the public contained an “off-type” (wrong seeds). Growers ended up with a Potato Leaf (PL) dwarf plant producing red, pear-shaped paste tomatoes. The funny part? The off-type turned out to be so incredibly productive and tasty that growers kept it and continued passing the seeds around under the name Vovchik!
- 🌿 Plant Habit: The popular off-type is a determinate micro-dwarf, topping out around 20 inches (50 cm) with Potato Leaf foliage. The “true” variety (rarely found) grows more like a sprawling ground-cover, similar to the famous Mongolian Dwarf.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: (Off-type): Red, pear-shaped/elongated fruits. The flesh is dense and slightly dry.
- 👅 Flavor & Uses: Sweet and tart. Because they are on the drier side, they are absolutely top-tier for canning, making thick sauce, or dehydrating (sun-dried tomatoes). They are also phenomenal keepers, lasting weeks on the counter without rotting.
An adorable little plant 👍. A tiny bush at 20 inches (50 cm) tall that is just absolutely smothered in little red pears. I only pruned the suckers up to the first truss, and after that I just let it do whatever it wanted. And it wanted to do a lot! 😂
The tasty, firm little tomatoes are great fresh, perfect for pickling, canning in their own juice, and dehydrating/sun-drying. The taste is sweet and tart, a little on the dry side. It’s the absolute find of the year for me. Practically zero disease issues. It’s staying on my grow list forever.
Sveta, what did the photo of Vovchik originally look like on your seed packet? Wasn’t it oblate (flat-round)? And did yours turn out to have Potato Leaves (PL)?
Because mine grew exactly like that (just like yours), the complete opposite of the picture on the packet. But I actually really liked this off-type.
Funny enough, this year I grew Kmicic (from Italy, Galinka Esme sent me the seeds) and that variety is an exact 1-to-1 copy of the Vovchik off-type!
Marina, Kmicic is a Polish variety.
So what’s the difference between them? Are they actually different varieties?
Marina wrote:
Sveta, what did the photo of Vovchik originally look like on your seed packet? Wasn’t it oblate (flat-round)? And did yours turn out to have Potato Leaves (PL)?
Because mine grew exactly like that (just like yours), the complete opposite of the picture on the packet…
Marina, yep, the leaves were Potato Leaf (PL), and the fruits were little pears. On my packet, just like yours, they pictured completely different tomatoes, large and oblate. So I have no idea what variety this actually is, but whatever was written on the packet is the name I’m keeping for it. And I can now add that the maters of this variety are excellent keepers.
I still have about 10 of them sitting in a basket on the cool floor, and the taste is still pretty good, obviously a bit worse than fresh off the bush. I throw them into soups, they add a really nice flavor profile 😋. And sometimes I just munch on them plain, also great 😋.
Our Vovchik turned out exactly like Svetlyachok’s, doesn’t look a thing like the photo on the packaging. The description on the packet doesn’t match either; they write that the fruits are round, 4.2-5.3 oz (120-150 g), with the first truss reaching up to 8.8 oz (250 g). The listed pros: firm, ripens fully on the vine. Yield up to 3.3 lbs (1.5 kg) per bush. Did anyone actually get a different Vovchik?
I bought this variety this year too.
The packaging says the fruits are round, weighing 1.8-2.1 oz (50-60 g).
The leaves are already showing up as Potato Leaf (PL), so based on your reviews, I feel like I’m in for a surprise 🙂
But if you guys liked it, I figure I won’t be too disappointed either.
Elena SAR wrote:
…The leaves are already showing up as Potato Leaf (PL), so based on your reviews, I feel like I’m in for a surprise 🙂
Elena, what kind of “Vovchik” did you end up getting?
My Vovchik’s plant shape and structure turned out looking a lot like Mongolian Dwarf, and the fruits were oblate exactly like they were on the picture 😲
Wow, you actually got the real deal 😲. Maiya, how did you like the taste?
Can’t really say anything about the taste, it got lost in the baskets among the overall harvest. Friends from Kyiv sent me the seeds in a Ukrainian packet.
Svetlyachok-plyus wrote:
An adorable little plant 👍. A tiny bush at 20 inches (50 cm) tall that is just absolutely smothered in little red pears…
I’m growing a Vovchik from your seeds right now. The fruits are slightly elongated, don’t really look like pears just yet, maybe they will a bit later. Even though the bush is a tiny micro-dwarf, it’s absolutely loaded with fruit.
