📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Verblyudy (Camels)
- 🌍 Origin: A unique Russian collector’s variety. The name “Verblyudy” translates to “Camels”. Why? Because it produces absolutely massive Potato Leaves (PL) that, according to growers, literally look like camel faces drooping down from the vine!
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate and highly vigorous. It has very thick, strong main stems and requires heavy staking, otherwise the weight of the fruit and its giant leaves will pull the whole plant down. It’s a bit of a “slowpoke” early in the season, but takes off once the heat hits.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Golden-yellow, round to slightly oval tomatoes. They are on the smaller side, typically maxing out around 3.5 oz (100 g), growing in clusters of 4 to 6.
- 👅 Uses & Skin: This is a top-tier canning tomato. The skin is incredibly thick and tough, meaning they will not split or turn to mush when subjected to boiling water during the pickling/canning process. The taste is sweet and classic.
- 💡 Editor’s Note on Canning: In this thread, a grower mentions the tomatoes surviving the “triple boiling water pour”. This is a traditional Eastern European home-canning method where jars of tomatoes are filled with boiling water three separate times to sterilize them without using a pressure canner. A tomato surviving this without splitting is the ultimate test of its firm skin!
Let me add one of my absolute favorite varieties. ❤️ “Camels” (Verblyudy), a golden delight. May everyone who grows my variety get a magically delicious and generous harvest! ❤️❤️❤️
Edited December 29, 2015 by Drosera
My Camels from 2015. Seeds from Svetlana. Liked the variety, tasty, heavy yielding, but judging by the photos, mine turned out smaller than Svetlana’s.
Girls, please describe this variety in more detail. Plant height, taste, weight, where did you grow it (in the greenhouse or out in the open dirt), days to maturity? All I can see right now is that it has Potato Leaf foliage. 🙂
Looks like mine didn’t turn out right 🤷♀️ Grew it in the greenhouse, Potato Leaf type. Was a very sturdy seedling. The bush was a det (determinate). Mine were also pretty small… closer to a cherry tomato. I liked the taste though, nice and sweet. Photo taken July 24th, still green… looks like a mid-season variety.
I already showed how they grow in my album. These are the kind of trusses it makes, but you need to prune the suckers moderately, otherwise the fruits can get too small.
This is how I started planting them out. Camels are by the fence, Amur Tiger didn’t make it into the frame. Dalnevostochnye (Far Eastern) are planted closer to the apple tree, they have potato leaves.
Edited January 2, 2016 by Drosera
VALENTINA/Abakan wrote:
Looks like mine didn’t turn out right 🤷♀️ Grew it in the greenhouse, Potato Leaf type. Was a very sturdy seedling. The bush was a det (determinate). Mine were also pretty small… closer to a cherry tomato. I liked the taste though, nice and sweet. Photo taken July 24th, still green… looks like a mid-season variety.
Valentina, it did turn out. 👍 It’s just a completely different variety 😳
Pani Tomat, thank you so much! 👏 What was the weight of the fruits? I looked at your photo, they didn’t turn out smaller, they look exactly the same. ❤️
It’s a shame that Camels didn’t make it into the catalog list.. 😳 I hope that someday opinions will change… 🙂 Nevertheless, this variety has a permanent spot in my garden.
Pani Tomat wrote:
My Camels from 2015. Seeds from Svetlana. Liked the variety, tasty, heavy yielding, but judging by the photos, mine turned out smaller than Svetlana’s.
Thank you for the kind review! ❤️❤️❤️ No, they aren’t smaller. You grew some wonderful little maters! ❤️❤️❤️
Edited May 9, 2016 by Drosera
Tried growing Camels again in 2016. Noticed the same thing as before, it didn’t catch any diseases at all. Extremely tasty when pickled/canned. The bush grew in the greenhouse to about 5.2 ft (160 cm). I’ll definitely be planting a few bushes of it along with the Krupnaya Grozd (Large Cluster) hybrid… perfect for small canning jars. It grows pretty tall.
Edited November 17, 2016 by Valentina / Abakan
Svetlana, describe the variety in more detail: days to maturity, bush structure/height, weight of the maters?
stounns wrote:
Svetlana, describe the variety in more detail: days to maturity, bush structure/height, weight of the maters?
The tomato weight doesn’t exceed 3.5 oz (100 grams). Great for canning/pickling, the skin is thick, they easily survive the triple boiling water pour method. On the old forum, I found a recipe for canned tomatoes with raspberry leaves, if I’m not mistaken. You have to pour boiling water over the tomatoes 3 times for that one.
The bush structure is vigorous, thick main stem, staking to poles or sticks is an absolute must. Otherwise, it can fall over from its own weight or the wind. It’s a clustering variety, 4 up to 6 tomatoes per truss. The maters themselves start out lemon-colored and oval, then they round out and turn golden yellow. It grew over 5.4 ft (165 cm) for me. However, it grows slowly at first, a bit of a slowpoke. Loves the sun, grows much shorter in the shade. That doesn’t affect the yield though. You absolutely must prune the suckers, it pumps them out like a master. Mid-late season. Potato Leaves.
Edited January 5, 2017 by Fotinia
This variety has the largest Potato Leaves, which literally look exactly like camel faces in real life. Back in ’16, it was the first one to die on me, caught Late Blight with those massive giant leaves.
This year was a success, tomato weather was an A-. The bush was sitting out in the open dirt, didn’t prune the suckers at all, just kept shoving support sticks under it, which were leaning over from the weight of all those sucker branches. Taste is good, tomatoes are firm. The bush looked beautiful, even when it was completely sprawling over.
