📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Appetitnyi (Appetizing)
- 🌍 Origin: A commercial variety from the Russian seed company Siberian Garden (SibSad). The name translates perfectly to “Appetizing” or “Mouthwatering”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: It behaves as a semi-determinate or a compact indeterminate. Outdoors in the open garden, it usually stops around 80-100 cm (31-40″). Inside a poly greenhouse, it can easily stretch to 1.7-1.8 m (5.5-6 ft). It requires pruning and staking.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Beautiful dark/black beefsteaks, often retaining dark green shoulders even when fully ripe. Average weight is 200-300g (7-10.5 oz), but with good feeding and pruning, they can easily reach 500-800g (1.1-1.7 lbs).
- 👅 Flavor: Widely considered one of the best-tasting dark tomatoes on the forum. It is exceptionally sweet, rich, and complex, lacking the blandness that sometimes plagues other dark varieties.
- ⚠️ Growing Tip: The dark fruits are somewhat prone to sunscald if grown outdoors in hot, southern climates without adequate leaf cover. Many growers prefer it as a greenhouse variety for this reason.
I didn’t grow this variety this past season, simply because I have so many untried varieties to test. Therefore, I don’t have any great photos.
Appetitnyi (SibSad). The packet says the color is ruby, the shade of a noble wine. I don’t think I’d be tempted to drink wine of that exact shade 😂 But the taste is excellent, one of our family’s absolute favorites. The plant height is about 80-90 cm (31-35″). Mine were around 200 grams (7 oz), but a friend of mine, growing from my saved seeds, got fruits about one and a half times larger.
I really liked it too. Even in my growing conditions, it set large fruits, and most importantly—out of all the black varieties, it has the best flavor. I plant several dark varieties, but if the others turn out worse than this one, I’ll just keep growing Appetitnyi exclusively.
Girls, what’s its maturity/ripening time?
Alenka, it’s mid-season (definitely not late!).
Forgive the shocking details: I sowed it last year sometime in mid-April. It managed to fully ripen two trusses (I had two bushes), and it set an absolute ton of fruit higher up, but they just didn’t have time to bulk up and ripen 🙌 I definitely don’t mind sparing some space for it in my tall greenhouse 😘 Thanks, Galya!
I also really liked Appetitnyi. The tastiest of all the dark ones I’ve grown. It grew in the greenhouse. Height was somewhere around 1.7-1.8 m (5.5-6 ft) (it grew next to Feyerverk, they were almost identical in height). The weight of the first tomatoes was between 360-450 grams (12-16 oz). The tomatoes are incredibly tasty, especially when they retain their green shoulders.
This year, my biggest fruit was 500 grams (1.1 lbs).
I planted this variety for the first time this year. One bush in the greenhouse, one outdoors in the open garden. In the greenhouse, the plant height was 1.8 m (6 ft); outdoors it was shorter, just over a meter (3+ ft). Both bushes produced a solid yield. Tomato weights were 200-300 grams (7-10.5 oz).
I absolutely loved the taste 😋😋😋, the most delicious of all the dark varieties I’ve tried.
Girls, did you prune/sucker it?
Of course, it’s better to prune it. Definitely remove suckers up to the first truss, since it’s a determinate, not a dwarf/tree-type, and it’s not an early variety either.
It actually performs better for me outdoors than in the greenhouse. Even though the outdoor fruits are smaller and often don’t have time to fully color up on the vine (but they ripen nicely off the vine indoors), if I didn’t prune it, I’d probably only get tiny, cherry-sized fruit…
Photos from the old forum.
Greenhouse grown:
Outdoor grown (next to a Black Moor / Chernyi Mavr tomato for color comparison):
Drosera said:
Of course, it’s better to prune it. Definitely remove suckers up to the first truss…
Thanks, I’ll do just that. Mine is also growing outdoors.
It turned out to be one of the sweetest varieties this season. The largest one was 800g (1.7 lbs)—I gave it away as a gift. I weighed it, but didn’t have time to photograph it. I have 2 bushes growing in the greenhouse, and there are still a few green ones left. It was rated with the highest possible scores by numerous “taste testers” 👍
The yield is decent, but it dropped some blossoms and skipped setting fruit on a few trusses (probably due to the heat).
My Appetitnyi: the one in the photo isn’t the largest, there were specimens up to 400g (14 oz). I grew it outdoors. In appearance and size, it turned out very similar to Chocolate Miracle (Shokoladnoye Chudo), but the flavor is much more pronounced—sweet with a slight tang (Choc. Miracle is a bit bland), and the skin is sturdy but not tough. I really liked this variety.
Appetitnyi. 😋
It didn’t like growing outdoors in my climate. For example, Tsingtao and Angolan handled the heat well, but Appetitnyi suffered from sunscald. But the taste is very good! 👍😋 Someday I’ll try it again, but inside the greenhouse.
Seeds from Balashov.
Copying this from my 2020 garden report) I didn’t plant it this year. I love it for its earliness (in my conditions).
Appetitnyi
Last year it was the very first of the indeterminate varieties to ripen. This year it lost out to Inzhirnyi (Fig), but it wasn’t far behind either. It set fruit well, there was no blossom drop. The tomatoes are uniform, all roughly 250 grams (9 oz). It is a short indeterminate; this year I pruned it to 3 leaders/stems. The taste is good.
