Quick Summary of Chernyi Prints (Black Prince)
- 🌍 Origin: A legendary Soviet-era heirloom dating back to the 1960s-1970s. Note: There is a massive issue with modern commercial seed companies selling incorrect strains (off-types). The “true” original Black Prince is highly sought after by collectors.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: The original is indeterminate (tall), typically reaching 1.5–1.8 m (5–6 ft), though some commercial packets wrongly sell determinate versions. It has regular foliage.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Beautiful chocolate-brown to dark burgundy oblate fruits, often with dark or green shoulders. Depending on the strain and pruning, they range from 150 g (5.2 oz) up to massive 500 g (17.6 oz) beefsteaks.
- 👅 Flavor: The true heirloom is prized for its rich, sweet, and perfectly balanced complex dark tomato flavor.
- ⚠️ Pro Tip: Do not let them hang on the vine for too long once ripe, as the fruits tend to get soft very quickly.
Description from the seed packet:
Large fruits weighing 250-300 g (8.8-10.5 oz). Fruit color is chocolate-brown. The plant is tall (indeterminate) and requires pruning (suckering). 125-130 days from germination to fruiting. The fruit is large, round, with few seeds. 4-5 fruits per truss. Usually, the plant is formed into 1-2 stems, leaving 4-5 trusses.
( Photo authors: Matilda, Rafitta, Anela.: Signor)
I had seeds from commercial companies Aelita, Russian Ogorod, and Siberian Garden. All three grew completely different, and I didn’t like a single one of them. 😞
I grew it for 3 years from Russian Ogorod. The bush is strong, very leafy. The packet says it is determinate, and if you grow it from this packet and prune the suckers, it yields quite quickly. If you don’t prune it, the fruits will be small.
In shape, they are oblate. The first ones were up to 300 g (10.5 oz), the ones higher up the plant were smaller. For me, they weren’t sweet enough, although many people liked it. You could say it is productive.
Seeds from Shevchuk (Ukraine).
– Plant habit: medium, spreading, normal.
– Fruit set: perfect, no skipped blossoms.
– Height in open ground (outdoors): 1.3 m (4.2 ft) in early August, up to 1.5 m (5 ft) by September.
– Trusses: 1-3 fruits each.
– Overall yield: medium, closer to high, but it only really got going from mid-August.
– Fruit: oblate, brown-burgundy with slight green shoulders, 150-250 g (5.2-8.8 oz), late ones get smaller.
– Density of ripe fruit: medium.
– Taste: balanced, tasty, harmonious, sweetness gets a 4+ out of 5.
First impression: a beautiful and tasty tomato, good for both fresh eating and processing. Minuses: the presence of minor green shoulders. Overall rating for the variety: 4+.
My Black Prince (grown from store-bought seedlings).
6 fruits per truss, 150-170 g (5.2-6 oz), some a little bigger. Regular leaf. The structure of the bush is medium, generative rather than vegetative. I grew it to 1 stem.
It develops, fills out, and ripens slowly. The fruit quickly gets soft and overripe on the bush. The sweetness, compared to Malakhitovaya Shkatulka (Malachite Box), is a 3.5 out of 5 (according to my sweet-toothed husband).
This variety turned out to be unstable for me in terms of taste and yield. For two years in a row, it had excellent taste and yield. But this year, from the exact same seeds, the fruits were only a “4 out of 5”. And I was hoping to improve it… 😞
In short, 1 bush grown to 1 stem in a glass greenhouse gave 8 fruits weighing 200-250 g (7-8.8 oz). Tasty, especially with salt!
I finally found the perfect Black Prince! I had so many failed attempts from various colorful commercial packets 😠
NataNata – THANK YOU 🌺🌺🌺
Mid-season. Height is about 1.8 m (6 ft). Very tasty, meaty, seeds are only around the edges. 👍😋 Yield turned out to be good.
Zolushka wrote:
I finally found the perfect Black Prince! … Height is about 1.8 m (6 ft). Very tasty, meaty, seeds are only around the edges. 👍😋
Yes, visually it looks very much like that variety from 30 years ago that stayed in my memory.
Olvia wrote:
Yes, visually it looks very much like that variety from 30 years ago that stayed in my memory.
Olya, it is exactly that one! 😉 I originally mail-ordered the seeds back in 2002-2003 from Chelyabinsk (from the Experimental Plot of “Traktorosad-3”) from a private collector.
It’s a short indeterminate, productive, with large (the largest were 400-500 g / 14-17.6 oz), sweet fruits. 😋
This is my absolute favorite variety of all. I now grow it from my own saved seeds, I don’t even remember which commercial company I originally bought them from. In this terrible weather year, it was the only one that fruited very well, and it was the earliest.
The fruits are round, medium-sized, dark red or brownish in color, and very tasty.
I planted it outdoors in open ground in 2019. There was no space left in the greenhouse, as I planted it just as an experiment to test out this famous variety. Unfortunately, I have no photos.
The seedling was strong, and it was one of the first to ripen. Out of 40 varieties I grew this year, the taste was one of the best.
I am searching for the original Black Prince from the 60s-70s of the last century. If anyone has seen it…
