📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Antonovka Medovaya
- 🌍 Origin & Name: A commercial variety from the Russian company “Premium Seeds”. It is named after the famous Russian winter apple, Antonovka, known for its green-yellow color and ability to be stored in cellars all winter. “Medovaya” means “Honey”.
- ⚠️ The Big Misunderstanding: The seed packet markets this as a sweet summer bicolor. It is not! This is a classic Long Keeper (winter storage tomato). If you try to eat it fresh off the vine in the summer, it will be rock hard and tasteless.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Determinate (bush). The plant stays compact and terminates (tops itself) naturally.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Picked light green to pale yellow. They are extremely firm. If stored in a cool, dark box, they will slowly soften by November/December. At full biological ripeness in storage, the flesh inside is supposed to turn bright pink (though growers report mixed results).
- 👅 Flavor: Terrible in the summer. But when allowed to ripen in a box for months, it becomes a decent, much-appreciated fresh tomato for the winter table.
Seeds from the company “Premium Seeds”.
Description on the packet: Mid-season, high-yielding, large-fruited, determinate. Fruits are round, light green; at biological ripeness they have yellow streaks and bright pink flesh.
When it overripens, I didn’t like the taste. I didn’t see any bright pink flesh either. The only good quality is that they are very firm and store well.
Aleksandra, is it completely different from the description? It’s not even green? Did the plant terminate (top itself)?
Elena, it looks brighter in the photo than in reality. Yes, it terminated, it is a determinate bush. It was slightly pink in the middle. I saved the seeds, but I don’t know if I’ll plant it again. I have mixed feelings about it—when you are surrounded by delicious summer varieties, you don’t want to eat this one. But in the autumn, it actually seems pretty decent. I’d love to hear from anyone else who has grown it.
I bought the seeds, but I was really hoping it would be green on the outside and pink on the inside, just like the description says.
Lena, maybe I just got an off-type (crossed seeds); there’s so much of that going around nowadays!
In that case, I’ll give it a try too.
Mine turned out looking exactly the same—yellowish on the outside, lighter yellow on the inside. It was the absolute latest to ripen, rock hard, and completely tasteless 😲 I think this is actually a long-keeper variety (for winter storage), and here I was dreaming of a green tomato with a pink center 😞 It could be an off-type, of course, maybe someone else actually grew what was on the packet.
I bought a packet of Antonovka Medovaya yesterday—I was lured in by the greenish color and pink center, thinking it was a bicolor. Turns out it’s a typical long-keeper. Oh well, I can plant one bush just to test it. I’ll put the packet with my winter storage varieties.
Could you tell us what the batch number was?
Did anyone plant this variety this year?
I wanted to grow it next year, but I was counting on it being green with a pink center.
Didn’t like it! Possibly an off-type. It was light yellow, weighed up to 100g (3.5 oz), rock hard, and one of the latest to ripen.
Total garbage! Tough, tasteless, and ugly!
Girls, mine actually did turn out pink on the inside. I picked them when they were almost white on the outside, and yes, they were quite hard. They sat in a communal storage box for a long, long time. When I finally started processing them, the large ones turned out to be pink inside, while the smaller ones stayed yellow. They are definitely tougher compared to other varieties. It really is meant for winter storage. I didn’t realize it at first, but after reading this thread, it all makes sense.
I read that if you store “Antonovka” in a cool place, by winter it turns pink inside and becomes edible. But it certainly wasn’t “honey-sweet” even down in the south.
Zulfiya said:
I read that if you store “Antonovka” in a cool place, by winter it turns pink inside and becomes edible…
I failed at storing it 😞
Belgorodka said:
Didn’t like it! …light yellow, up to 100g, rock hard…
Same here.
That means there’s no space for it in my garden.
But the description on the seed packet was written so beautifully!
Ah, so that’s how it is. And here I was wondering why they just wouldn’t ripen on the vine for me.
I also planted Antonovka Medovaya, though just one bush. There were a lot of tomatoes, and they were very hard. At first, I didn’t appreciate the variety at all. But when November rolled around and all the other fresh tomatoes were gone, it was time to try Antonovka. Not a single one had a pink core, but the tomato itself was quite soft and tasty enough by then. I planted it again this year, along with the actual Long Keeper variety (that one is also supposed to store for a long time, but it’s reddish inside). It’s nice to have some variety in the winter too.
