📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Zlatava (Zlatova)
- 🌍 Origin: A popular Eastern European commercial variety, frequently sold by the Russian seed company Elkom and the Lithuanian company Seklos. Spelling varies between Zlatova and Zlatava.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), but highly manageable and not overly aggressive. A unique quirk of this variety is that it pushes out short, stocky suckers that immediately form flower clusters.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Cocktail-sized tomatoes. The standout feature is their stunning bicolor contrast: bright yellow-orange skin on the outside, but reddish flesh on the inside.
- 👅 Flavor: Sweet, moderately juicy, with firm skin that holds up perfectly for canning in jars without being too tough for fresh eating.
My seeds were from the Elkom company. The plant is indeterminate, but it’s not aggressive at all, it reached about 4.2 feet (1.3 m) tall for me. At first, I was pruning it to two main stems. But this variety has a really cool quirk: it pushes out these sturdy, short suckers that already have flower clusters right on them, and it sets fruit perfectly on those. I just didn’t have the heart to pinch them off. So after a while, I just let the plant do its own thing.
The yield is very good. The tomatoes are bright yellow-orange, absolutely gorgeous, and the flesh inside is reddish. They are very tasty, you can definitely taste the sweetness. Moderately juicy, and the skin is firm but still pleasant to chew. I think they are going to be absolutely perfect for canning whole in jars. I weighed 3 of them together, and the total weight was 5.5 oz (158 g).
Here is a harvest photo from yesterday.
Nadya, my seed packet is spelled ZlatAva, the seeds are from the Lithuanian agricultural company Seklos. Based on your description, it sounds like a perfect match. I guess it can be spelled with either an “O” or an “A”, so we shouldn’t worry about it going forward.
Edited January 14, 2015 by Drosera
Marina, yeah probably, they just spell it differently so we don’t end up creating duplicate catalog entries. My seed packet just had the name printed in Russian.
As the forum members figured out, Zlatava and Zlatova are the exact same variety. “Zlato” means “gold” in many Slavic languages, which perfectly describes the glowing orange skin of this tomato. The defining characteristic of Zlatava is its striking internal color contrast—it looks like a standard orange cocktail tomato on the outside, but when you slice it open, it has a beautiful reddish-pink center, much like a blood orange!
