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Old April 24, 2016   #45
Andrey_BY
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Minsk, Belarus, Eastern Europe (Zone 4a)
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King Humbert (Roi Humbert) is an old Italian tomato variety according to Russian books, old seed catalogs and modern seed sources. Roi=King in Latin language as you know.

In Russia it has been introduced in 1870s by the well-known Russian seedman and breeder Efim Grachev (1826-1877) from St.Petersburg in his commercial seed catalog and became one of the first industrial tomato varieties in Russian Empire early in 1900s until 1917 October Revolution.

Efim Grachev was a pioneer of vegetable breeding in Russia. He has bred more than 200 varieties of potatoes, turnips, cabbages, corn, carrots, peas and other vegetables. He has collected a huge amount of old local and foreign varieties and has won a lot of awards abroad participating in Russian, French, German and American (Philadelphia-1876) exhibitions. He liked to show a giant culvivars in international Exhibitions (2-3 times larger than nornal size). For example, at Vienna Agricultural Ex he was the only one participant from Russia, but all were impressed and even shocked of his really giant white cabbage d60cm and many other giant vegetables presented.
There were some other well-known foreighn tomato varieties in his seed collection: Victoria, President Garfield, PONDEROSA, Mikado, Fikarazzi, Tom Tumb and many more...


My oldest collected Russian gardening book by Mikhail Rytov "Gardening in protected ground" (printed in 1915) says" Korol Gumbert (King Humbert) has got red, small plum shaped fruit (sometimes a bit ribbed), up to 10 fruit per a truss. A great productivity while growing in greenhouse in the North. Can be good enough in open ground in hot years."

There is no pointed end on a fruit as you can see.

It has been still popular in USSR times from 1917 till World War II...
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1 kg=2.2 lb , 1 m=39,37 in , 1 oz=28.35 g , 1 ft=30.48 cm , 1 lb= 0,4536 kg , 1 in=2.54 cm , 1 l = 0.26 gallon , 0 C=32 F

Andrey a.k.a. TOMATODOR

Last edited by Andrey_BY; April 24, 2016 at 12:16 PM.
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