📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Yellow Brandywine (Platfoot Strain)
- 🌍 Origin: A legendary American heirloom from Ohio, popularized by Gary Platfoot. It is fascinating to see how highly prized and widely grown this specific US strain is among Russian and Siberian greenhouse growers!
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. True to the Brandywine family, it has Potato Leaf (PL) foliage. Growers often describe the PL vines as looking somewhat “transparent” and elegant.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Massive, oblate orange-yellow beefsteaks. Known for being incredibly dense and meaty.
- 👅 Flavor: World-class. A complex, rich, and sweet flavor profile that many consider the absolute gold standard for yellow tomatoes.
- ⏳ Maturity & Yield: Late season. Like most Brandywines, it is notoriously finicky and can be a very stingy yielder (sometimes only giving 1-2 fruits per plant), but the sheer size and flavor make it worth the trouble.
Grew this outdoors in open ground. With a late planting, it grew to about 1 meter (3 ft) tall. Fruit weight was 200-350g (7-12 oz), although it is advertised to reach up to 600g (1.3 lbs). Potato leaf (PL) foliage. The yield was average, but the taste was very good.
Sasha, by “very good” do you mean sweet?
Yes, a rich, sweet flavor. I really liked it. There are tomatoes that are very sweet but the taste feels “empty”. This one is truly flavorful!
You guys can throw tomatoes at me, yell at me, whatever… but I have to ask: 😅
Did the Russian name on the packet—”Brandywhite Yellow Platfoot”—not surprise anyone? Brandywhite Yellow? (And I don’t even know what a Platfoot is).
This exact name exists in collector catalogs, including abroad. It’s likely the result of a bad machine translation somewhere down the line. I didn’t set out to investigate why it’s named that way, I just wanted to show that this variety exists and produces these tomatoes. If you have the time and desire to dig through the internet and figure out the exact naming history, be my guest. Sometimes variety names are just plain weird anyway—like Pink Furry Boar… what exactly makes it a boar? So, I posted it under the name it came to me with.
It’s quite possible that it’s just a bad machine translation of the original English name: Yellow Brandywine (Platfoot strain).
Here are some links for reference: 😳
http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Brandywine_Yellow,_Platfoot
https://www.tomatogrowers.com/YELLOW-BRANDYWINE-P-S/productinfo/5248–BULK/
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/54791/#b
Elena, that’s exactly what I thought too, that it’s just Yellow Brandywine. Especially since the leaf is potato leaf (PL). That means it’s the real deal.
I grew it this year, but unfortunately, mine turned out to have regular leaves (RL). 😞
Off-topic… Elena, why did you send us down that rabbit hole with those seed links… 😩💸
Ah, now it makes sense. Platfoot is a surname!
And it was clear from the start that it was supposed to be Brandywine, not “Brandywhite.”
Quote from tomatinka:
I grew it this year, but unfortunately, mine turned out to have regular leaves (RL).
Verunchik, what does that mean? 🤔 What is a regular leaf? 😳
Marina, it just means standard, normal tomato foliage, not potato-leaved.
I also really liked this variety, as well as the others in this family (Wine Brandy, Brandywine). Potato leaf, yield is average but decent (I’m sure others might get better yields!). I loved the flavor and the texture is very pleasant, and it has this lingering aftertaste 😋 — which is probably where the “wine” in the name comes from. I sowed it again this year.
I hated it. I grew it from English seeds I bought on an eBay auction. It was incredibly stingy—we’re talking literally 1 fruit per bush.
Maturity was definitely on the late side. I didn’t even bother saving seeds because I have absolutely zero desire to ever plant it again.
Seeds from eBay. The bush in the greenhouse wasn’t very tall, potato leaf (PL). The fruits are large, 200-300g (7-10.5 oz), oblate, firm, and tasty. It showed pretty good resistance to Leaf Mold (Cladosporium).
I grew it for the first time this year. Seeds were from Royal Seeds. For me, it was a mid-season variety. Vigorous vine with potato leaves. I pruned it to 2 main stems, and it grew all the way to the greenhouse roof. It yielded a grand total of 2 fruits… but what fruits! One was 640g (1.4 lbs) and the other 500g (1.1 lbs).
The flavor is sweet with a slight tangy kick. Solid meat—it breaks apart cleanly like a true southern field tomato. It completely won me over! I didn’t save seeds because the yield was so pathetic, and now I regret it. I’ll be repeating it though, I still have seeds left in the packet.
Update: This summer the weather was great, and the yield was much better—over 8 tomatoes per bush, averaging about 300g (10.5 oz) each. Seeds were from the exact same packet as before. The taste is absolutely exquisite. I compared it side-by-side with Orange Strawberry, and the color is definitely brighter. I saved seeds this time!
I planted Apricot Brandywine in my polycarbonate greenhouse (seeds from Ninulia, a huge thank you to her!). The variety is wonderful: the bush reached 1.8 m (6 ft), pruned to 2 stems. Because of the potato leaf foliage, the plant actually looks somewhat “transparent” and elegant.
I got about 10 fruits off it. The higher up the vine they grew, the larger they got—just massive, sweet saucers.
