📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Zheltyi Volynshchik (Yellow Bagpiper)
- 🌍 Origin: An heirloom variety traced back to the legendary German tomato collector Reinhard Kraft. The Russian name translates to “Yellow Bagpiper”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall). Reaches over 6.5 ft (2 m) tall. The bush is sturdy but not overly sprawling. Outstanding weather resistance – it sets fruit perfectly in both extreme heat and cold snaps.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large, perfectly shaped yellow-orange oxhearts. They are consistently massive, weighing 12.3-21 oz (350-600 g), and the fruit size does not drop off on the higher trusses.
- 👅 Flavor & Texture: Dense, buttery, and incredibly sweet. The flesh is highly aromatic and not mealy in the slightest. Very few seeds.
“Zheltyi Volynshchik” (Yellow Bagpiper) – an old heirloom variety from the collection of Reinhard Kraft (Germany). I got my seeds from a collector in Tula.
Indet, 6.5 ft (2 m) and taller, the bush is sturdy but not overly sprawling. Mid-season.
I grew it in the greenhouse in 2025. Pruned it to two main stems. It didn’t catch a single disease. It sets fruit perfectly without dropping blossoms, handling both the heat and the cold like a champ. The fruits are yellow-orange, large, perfectly shaped hearts. They are all huge, no small ones at all – weighing 12.3-21 oz (350-600 g). The size doesn’t drop off as the plant grows taller. Word on the street is that if you prune the trusses*, they can reach 2.2 lbs (1 kg) or more! But I didn’t thin mine out. The flesh is aromatic, buttery, dense, and not mealy. They hold up very well hanging on the vine for a while. At the same time, the tomatoes are very juicy. Very few seeds.
Very tasty and sweet. A super variety!
The photos don’t even show the bottom truss. We ate the bottom one before I could even grab my camera 😆 It’s just sooo tasty.
- Reinhard Kraft: Svetlana mentions getting seeds originating from Reinhard Kraft. He is a highly respected German horticulturist and heirloom seed collector who played a massive role in preserving and distributing rare tomato varieties globally in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
- *Pruning Trusses (Culling): Svetlana notes that growers can get 2.2 lb (1 kg) fruits by “pruning the trusses”. In competitive tomato growing, if a flower truss produces 5 or 6 blossoms, growers will pinch off (cull) all but 1 or 2 of them. This forces the plant to direct 100% of its water and energy into those remaining tomatoes, resulting in absolute giants!
