Ispolin

[jwr6404]

Received seeds for this variety in a trade. Had read their description on the Tomatofest site a couple of years ago and was interested. Tatania's(excuse the spelling) lists 2 varieties with Ispolin in their name. Question has anyone in Tomatoville land ever grown this tomato ? If so what was the resulting fruit characterietics?
TIA
Jim

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by jwr6404

Received seeds for this variety in a trade. Had read their description on the Tomatofest site a couple of years ago and was interested. Tatania's(excuse the spelling) lists 2 varieties with Ispolin in their name. Question has anyone in Tomatoville land ever grown this tomato ? If so what was the resulting fruit characterietics?
TIA
Jim

Ispolin was a variety that Bill McDorman of Seeds Trust, aka High Altitude Seeds, brought back from Siberia many years ago and he brought back many others and Craig and I bought all of them and split the cost.

It's a large pink beefsteak but I don't remember what the taste was like it's been so many years since I grew it. Had it been outstanding, I'm sure I would have remembered it.

Just a few SSE members list it and taste comments are positive but not outstanding as I see it when I look at some back Yearbook issues.

Tatiana lists Ispolin in the 2008 Yearbook and citres Andrey from Belarus for seeds in 2005 and right underneath it also lists Ispolin Malinovyi and cites her source as Andrey, from Belarus in 2007 and notes that's it a CV form Siberskyi Sad, Novosibursk, Russia.

The one named just Ispolin is tranlated as Giant and the other one is translated as Giant Pink.

But they are the same variety, the Ispolin that McDorman got has been around since the early 90's; he obviously just wasn't given the info that the full name included Malinovyi when he was collecting varieties in Siberia.

So I'm not exactly sure why there are two listings for the same variety from Tatiana, but I'm sure she could explain why she did that b'c the blurb for just Ispolin could have included the updated name and the CV origin.

[Tania]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Ispolin was a variety that Bill McDorman of Seeds Trust, aka High Altitude Seeds, brought back from Siberia many years ago and he brought back many others and Craig and I bought all of them and split the cost.

It's a large pink beefsteak but I don't remember what the taste was like it's been so many years since I grew it. Had it been outstanding, I'm sure I would have remembered it.

Just a few SSE members list it and taste comments are positive but not outstanding as I see it when I look at some back Yearbook issues.

Tatiana lists Ispolin in the 2008 Yearbook and citres Andrey from Belarus for seeds in 2005 and right underneath it also lists Ispolin Malinovyi and cites her source as Andrey, from Belarus in 2007 and notes that's it a CV form Siberskyi Sad, Novosibursk, Russia.

The one named just Ispolin is tranlated as Giant and the other one is translated as Giant Pink.

But they are the same variety, the Ispolin that McDorman got has been around since the early 90's; he obviously just wasn't given the info that the full name included Malinovyi when he was collecting varieties in Siberia.

So I'm not exactly sure why there are two listings for the same variety from Tatiana, but I'm sure she could explain why she did that b'c the blurb for just Ispolin could have included the updated name and the CV origin.

Carolyn, this is because these two varieties I list are different tomatoes - Ispolin is RED, and Ispolin Malynovyi is PINK. If they are listed next to each other in the SSE Yearbook then it was mistakenly placed in a wrong section, which happens very often as I noticed, and not because a member wanted so.

Ispolin collected by McDorman is 'Ispolin Malinovyi'.

Ispolin I list is a red tomato, commercial variety from Russia, and described by Russian CV as red.

This is confusing, I know - I wish the 'red' Ispolin was called something else... or 'Ispolin' from Seed Trust had correct name...

Btw, Ispolin Malinovyi has much better flavor than the red Ispolin, IMO.

Tania

[carolyn137]

Thanks for the explanation Tania, and yes, they are listed right next to each other in the pink section. None are listed in the red section.

And what's been listed in the Yearbooks has always been the pink one.

I'm not sure I understand why all of a sudden a red one appears.

Why don't you e-mail Joanne and see if you can get that red one changed to the red section?

I do find the situation confusing anyway that there should be two Ispolin's in circulation, one apparently a CV the other one not.

[dice]

Tastes good (slightly sweet and mild), nice, smooth, slightly
oblate fruit of good size (though I would not call it "giant";
no bigger than an average Box Car Willie), fair production.
Gets mealy in cold weather in the fall, so you had better hope
for a good summer with these.

While not a spitter for flavor, I have not felt the urge to grow
it again. (Almost a fine tomato, but in my opinion it needs
more staying power in cool weather and better production
to really be worth growing in the Pacific Northwest.)

[nctomatoman]

Ispolin was in the second batch of High Altitude varieties...I so generally unimpressed with many in the first batch (Sasha's Altai, Perestroika, Grushovka, Glasnost) that I never did grow any of the second offerings. (Grandpa's ♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫'s plume, Gregori's Altai and Galina are the three that stood out for me).

By the way, the dirty word editor made that tomato name a bit musical, hey!

[Tania]

Carolyn,

Not that the red one 'suddenly' appeared - Andrey distributed in back in 2005. I am guessing as it was not a very good one, not many people continued growing it, if they tried it.

Being an obsessive seed saver, I am not ready to toss the seeds and pretend there is no red Ispolin variety Besides, it is vended by a few Russian CVs in Moscow (at least it was last year - I did not check recently if it is still offered).

[Tania]

Btw, this may give a bit more information - http://t-garden.homeip.net/mwiki/index.php/Ispolin

Tania

[carolyn137]

Not that the red one 'suddenly' appeared - Andrey distributed in back in 2005. I am guessing as it was not a very good one, not many people continued growing it, if they tried it.


****

Tania, my use of the word suddenly for the red was in comparison to the pink Ispolin that Bill Mc Dorman brought back and that was in the early 90's.

So the red has been around for about 10 years as compared to the pink which was listed by McDoman himself in the 1996 Yearbook and maybe the 95 b/c it's not in the 94 and it looks like the 95 is at the bottom of one pile and I'm not going there.

So the pink was known and grown and available about 10 years before Andrey sent you the red, which was in 2005.
And you only received the pink from him in 2007 although it's been listed and known here in the US since the mid-90's.

I do hope you can get the red, whatever it is, moved to the red section.

I still am confused, though, b'c other varieties that came from the former Russia seem to use other words to describe "Giant" and why then two varieties with the variety name Ispolin when other words are used to describe the size as Giant?


And yes, I did take a look at you link, had scanned it before but had not read your explanation below.

BTW, McDorman translated Ispolin as Giant and said he got it in Siberia from Dr. Nickolai Andriev, who I think was head of the Plant Breeding station there at the time and where they had many local family varieties as well. That info from the article at McDorman's website as I remember without going back to read that article.

[travis]

There are many English words also used to describe giants or gigantic. Most are coloquial, mythological or adopted words, as is Ispolin.

[Andrey_BY]

I must admit there even several times more words in Russian language to feet an English word "Giant" and most of you know them because of tomato varieties names: Bogatyr, Velikan, Gigant etc. Even the word "Volat" means "Ispolin" or "Giant" in Belarusian language, Carolyn


The language of Pushkin is far from laconism like English

And to tell the truth the fact that I've introduced Ispolin (the red one) to some of you in 2004 does not meant anything that you might think of about an age of them or their real roots. Many of our seed companies from any part of former Soviet Union used to pick up and distribute both commercial and non-commercial varieties they have access to. I know about both Ispolin and Ispolin Malinovyi since early 1990s. The one with raspberry-pink skin was more difficult to find and less known commercially but I don't know real originators of these 2 vareities.
Once again I suggest you not identify any our vareities some of your people import or even take with them from expeditions to Siberia or Moscow or elsewhere in former Soviet Union as Siberian or even Russian because Russia is a huge country and Soviet Union has even larger area...

[carolyn137]

Once again I suggest you not identify any our vareities some of your people import or even take with them from expeditions to Siberia or Moscow or elsewhere in former Soviet Union as Siberian or even Russian because Russia is a huge country and Soviet Union has even larger area...

****

Andrey, with respect to the varieties that Bill McDorman brought back from Siberia and got From Dr. Andriev, we've discussed this here before and you said there was a plant breeding station at that site and the site is identified in the article McDorman wrote about in the article at his webpage.

As for other varieties, I'm not sure what you really mean when you say YOU, meaning ME, should not identify varieties coming from the former Russia, now CIS.

You have the some of the Yearbooks I have and I have more, and when someone ID's a variety as coming from a certain place either in your area or elsewhere, it seems to me that's OK.

With respect to all those 12 varieties given to me two years ago you'll remember that I posted them here, I still have the thread, and asked for help in translating the names as well as the seed companies from which they came and you and Tania and Alex and a few others were very helpful in that regard.

I'm sorry there's been confusion with the variety Ispolin but what you're saying, and I said above, is that McDorman should have been given the full name that indicated it was pink. But he wasn't given that name. And since he first listed it in the SSE Yearbook those of us who bought seeds from him knew and grew it as a pink Ispolin.

I just don't know what to think when you caution me, specifically, about not identifying any varieties that "your people" import b/c any SSE member reading the Yearbook is going to read variety sources in the Yearbook and assume they are correct.You and Tania have been very good in indicating variety sources, more so than most folks who recieved a new variety directly from someone in the CIS.

I would prefer to have everyone work together to get information, such as I did with those 12 varieties I posted here, rather than cautioning me or others to NOT identify varieties that already are listed in the SSE Yearbook by the information given by the person listing.

That doesn't seem quite right to me, to be honest.

I try the best I can, as you know, to ID sources, but I can't be responsible for others.

[dice]

I know what he means: that the place where the variety came
from when it was imported may not be precisely the place where
it originated.

Example: Golden Harvest Organics got Peremoga from someone
in Estonia, and identified it as coming from Estonia. But there
is a Peremoga 165 that may be the same tomato, and
Peremoga 165 was bred in Belarus. So, if they are the same
tomato cultivar, is it from Estonia or Belarus?

McDorman got a selection of varieties from Siberia, but there
is no way to know how many of them were actually bred there,
either by agricultural researchers or private individuals. And
likewise for varieties from elsewhere in the CIS and former
Soviet Union. Was a variety that someone got from the Ukraine,
or Moldova, or Siberia, or Russia actually grown out from the
original F1 to a stable OP there? What Andrey is saying is that
this information is not generally available.

To put it another way: if someone in, say, Brazil gets Early
Rouge from Sandhill Preservation, does that make Early Rouge
"from the American Midwest"? We know that it does not, that
Early Rouge is a French heirloom, but Andrey is saying that for
many cultivars found in the CIS there is no such well-known
history.

[carolyn137]

I know what he means: that the place where the variety came
from when it was imported may not be precisely the place where
it originated.

****

I know that and Andrey knows that I know that as well.

And you've given several good examples of how origins can be misinterpreted.

Perhaps I was reacting too quickly when he said YOU, which means ME, but other than that I do understand the intent and I've been very careful about asking for help on the CIS ones as Andrey and others here already know.

So I did take the YOU he wrote as being directed at me personally.

[Andrey_BY]

Dice has said it all for me right