Yablonka Rossii / Tamina Tomato Review

A variety familiar to everyone. I doubt I can tell you anything new about it, but I’ll do it anyway:

Grew it for the first time. Seeds are from SeDek.

It’s an early-ripening, unpretentious variety. Potato leaf type.
Fruits are 80-150 grams (2.8-5.3 oz), even, perfectly round, and red.

The fruit set is excellent; the trusses are full. It doesn’t stop growing or setting fruit either in the heat or in the cold. The fruiting period is very long and extended.
In the greenhouses today, the bushes are over two meters (6.5 feet) tall, the leaves are healthy, clean, and bright green; it is blooming and producing fruit. The fruits do not crack with the onset of rains and sudden weather changes, even though the skin is not tough.

I overexposed the insides of Yablonka with the camera flash, but you can see the main thing — the fruit has two locules and is multi-seeded.

The taste is a regular, classic tomato flavor, with both sweetness and tartness present.

Sveta, I had read about this variety, but somehow haven’t come across it yet. Thank you, I didn’t know it had a potato leaf.

Yablonka Rossii (Tamina). I traveled to Moscow for it back in the 90s. I planted it for three years. You won’t believe it! Not my variety! For two years, it didn’t germinate at all! (which almost never happens with tomatoes). In the third year, I managed to nurse it to 0.5 m (1.6 ft), and then it happily died. And I was looking for it specifically for its yield.

Olya, Yablonka Rossii and Tamina in brackets — is that the same variety?

Nadya, yes 🤫

Leka wrote:
Yablonka Rossii (Tamina). I traveled to Moscow for it back in the 90s. I planted it for three years. You won’t believe it! Not my variety! For two years, it didn’t germinate at all!

Olya, maybe you got off-type seeds (cross-pollinated)? I grew it a very long time ago when my parents had a garden. They grew in open ground, and the branches were bending under the weight of the tomatoes. The height was about 80 cm (2.6 ft). Now my neighbors plant this variety in their greenhouses. I offer them this new variety and that one 😄 but they don’t want them 😄. Every season they treat me to Yablonka. The taste is cloyingly sweet and meaty. I save seeds and again sow some untried exotic stuff instead. I admit it… I’m a tomato addict 🫣

PanIrina wrote:
Olya, maybe you got off-type seeds (cross-pollinated)?

Irina, I bought it 3 times. It’s just that sometimes I really want something, but it just won’t grow for me. At one of my dachas, dill wouldn’t grow at all. The neighbors had plenty, but I had none. Both my neighbor and his wife came over to sow it themselves. In beds, scattered randomly. NO dill, period. So I don’t stress over it. If it doesn’t want to live with me, so be it!

This year I had Tamina from “Minsk Sort Sem Ovoshch”; out of 6 seeds, one germinated and just took off. I read online that it is Yablonka Rossii. Everything grew exactly like in the photos and Sveta’s description, 100%. My absolute favorite tomato. I pruned it to 2 stems, and after the 5th or 6th truss (I don’t remember exactly), I topped it. But the poor thing kept going as if nothing happened and set a bunch more fruits. I am thrilled with it. I saved seeds, will plant about 5 bushes in 2015. If anyone needs some, I can share, I just hope they are viable… for some reason, its germination rate isn’t the best…

PanIrina wrote:
…and meaty.

But in Sveta’s (Sweet) photos, it doesn’t look meaty at all…

nimoff wrote:
But in Sveta’s (Sweet) photos, it doesn’t look meaty at all…

It’s true the color didn’t translate well in the photo, but in reality, they are a rich, uniform red, and they are indeed meaty.

Matilda wrote:
…and they are indeed meaty.

Yours might be meaty, but in the ones shown in the photo, it’s just seeds. No meat. 😔

Which means — the name is the same, but the strains are different… 😜

Vitaly, people just have different understandings of what “meaty” means. I know from experience that for many, simply non-rigid tomatoes are already considered meaty.

Yablonka has sugary flesh, which is why it reflects white in the photo. The walls of the fruit are also soft.

Interesting, I suddenly found seeds from 1994 labeled Tomaten Tamina from the city of Quedlinburg. Apparently, even back then, I wrote “Yablonka Rossii” on it. I think I might try them, maybe they’ll want to germinate. The ones from 2000 germinated fine for me before.

Nadia wrote:
Olya, Yablonka Rossii and Tamina in brackets — is that the same variety?

Over here, they write “Yablonka Rossii (Tamina)”, but on a German tomato forum last year, a debate broke out about whether Tamina and Matina are the same variety.

Some say it’s the exact same variety, others say they are different, and highly respected tomato enthusiasts are on both sides of the argument. What is known for sure is that Tamina is an old GDR (East German) variety, and our seeds came exactly from the GDR. In many internet sources, they write that these varieties are identical. Some growers point out that Matina has slightly larger fruits, while seed vendors say it’s the same variety. Everyone agrees on only one thing — the tomatoes have a great taste, with both sweetness and tartness. By the way, Germans often refer to tomatoes of this size and taste as “normal” tomatoes.

I got a fresh packet of Matina, maybe I’ll try it in 2015. But I haven’t grown Tamina; back in the day, those seeds were hard to get.

I have been growing Yablonka Rossii (without the name Tamina in brackets) for many years and am very satisfied, it never lets me down. But I have never planted Tamina, I need to buy it and try.

Good variety, planted it multiple times! It always pleased me with an abundant yield and resistance to diseases.

Yablonka Rossii has reached us too.

In our climate… when many tomatoes are already sitting in salads, this one is only just starting to gain fruit color, compared to other varieties planted at the same time.

There are indeed a lot of fruits, and they are uniform. The bush doesn’t get sick.

We plan to use it for canning. I like the fruits for their shape and uniformity.

Our Yablonka is somehow not turning red. Even though it’s been hot. It reached a dark yellow color and stopped. I harvested it today, tired of waiting.

Last year we didn’t get to taste the harvest from Yablonka Rossii; late blight (phytophthora) hit and destroyed the whole bush, while Matina standing next to it survived. But this year — 1.2 m (4 ft) tall, sweet-and-sour little balls hanging from all sides. I left the suckers, and it carried everything; the heat didn’t affect the fruit set. The bush is still standing in open ground with smaller fruits on it. It started ripening no later than Tamina and Matina.

Seeds were from “NK”.

My seeds were from “SeDek” and way past their expiration date. I grew it for the first time, had 2 bushes in the greenhouse. It has potato-type leaves, an early and abundant variety. Almost all of them ripened fully red on the vine. The tomatoes are medium-sized, taste is regular.

Is the tomato “Yablochnyi” (Apple) the same as Yablonka Rossii?
You can see the packaging in the photo.

Producer is “Semena Altai”.
A lady at the market told me a whole lore story 😄
When she was young and getting married, she went somewhere for her honeymoon, like a pine forest retreat. And a lady there kept a little garden. And she had tomatoes growing in it — just like on the picture. She asked for seeds. The lady shared and said this is the “Yablochnyi” variety. Then the variety was trending, everyone planted it, searched for it, shared it, and then it completely disappeared. It was gone for many years. And just two or three years ago, it reappeared, found by some “Aunt Dunya from Altai” 🙄

Of course, every vendor has their own “history” ))

Those who grew it told me that it is, most likely, “Matina” sold under a different name by shoddy Russian seed companies.