Tomato Kibit’s Ukranian

A small(ish), plum shaped open pollinated tomato on determinate plants.

Description

Kibit’s Ukranian is a Plum shaped mid-season tomato on a relatively small Determinate plant (which makes it good for growing in containers). We grew it for the first time in 2016 using seed from a seeds swap in the UK so, we’ve looked around the web to find more information about it.

The consensus seems to be similar to ours, the medium sized elongated fruit taste relatively good but (in our opinion) are better for cooking that eating raw in salads. Whilst it isn’t a dry as something like Roma, it hasn’t the high level of juice found in round fruit.

We were pleased with it as it provided a lot of fruit over a long season (it was picked with the last tomatoes from the greenhouses) and it has kept well. All this sounds good but the fruit early on in the season suffered from Blossom End Rot and we initially thought we were going to have the same problem as we had with Rio Grande when we lost the whole crop to BER but, fortunately, after the first few fruit were picked off, the remainder were fine and worthwhile (this also seems to be common to other growers which is gratifying).

It also seems to have acquired a number of different names together with possible different sources/history. Its definitely Eastern European but could be from Poland or Ukraine.

Anyway, a tomato that we found good, productive and worthwhile. We grew it again in 2017, using seed we had saved from 2016 and it did well. We grew it both on the bench in the polytunnel and in a pot hanging in the tunnel. It did better in the tray (although the fruit were prone to getting eaten by slugs) I think mainly because it needed more water than I gave it in the hung pot.

One of the cultivars we grew in 2020. Sown in Mid March, the first fruit started showing on 27th May.

The many names associated are probably translation variations.