George's Russian

Plum to Pepper shaped fruit are red with dark red flesh. Fruit measure 2.75-5.2 inches, 1.5-2.75 inches wide, and weigh up to 9 ounces. Inserted style. 3-8 fruit per cluster. Indeterminate plants with standard leaves. Inserted styles. A bit longer season and above average productivity when grown in 2016 at Heritage Farm. Fruit was stricken with blossom end rot. This is a good tasting sauce tomato. Fruit is juicy and meaty. Donated to SSE in 2012 by Peggy Haskin of Racine, WI. Peggy related the story of how her father, George Wind of Somers, WI, received this variety: " in the early 1970s, my father, George Wind, was tending to his large garden when a very elderly gentleman rode by on his bicycle. He stopped to chat with my father, and they swapped many stories about gardening. He told my father, in his very broken English, that he would bring him some tomato seeds that his mother had brought over from the ‘old country.’ True to his word, the next day he pedaled by and brought my father these seeds. Since my father could not identify his accent, he jokingly called the gentleman his Russian gardener friend, and hence the tomatoes became our Russians. He was saddened that he never saw the elderly gentleman again to tell him how much we enjoy the tomatoes.” SSE Accession # 131733