Candy Sweet Icicle Tomato Reviews & Grow Notes

Candy Sweet Icicle – A medium-height (1.2 meters / 4 ft in the greenhouse) tomato variety, mid-season maturity. The fruits are small, red with stripes, plum-shaped. Very beautiful and tasty, juicy, and sweet.

I ordered the seeds from Lidochka 🌺 Her description:

Determinate, mid-early, short (0.5-0.7m) variety by Brad Gates. Fruits are elongated plums with a “beak” (pointed tip), red with yellow streaks and stripes, weighing 30-50g, incredibly sweet, just like candy. Great for fresh eating and for canning. Disease resistant.

Another absolute miracle! I grew one bush in a polycarbonate greenhouse and another outdoors. The greenhouse one was early, grew to about 1.5m (5 ft), and then topped itself (acted as a determinate). It was absolutely loaded with fruit! The outdoor one got hit by frost in May and took a long time to bounce back. It ended up being less than a meter tall, but was no less productive than the greenhouse one. The taste is simply mind-blowing! But it’s hard to describe. Rich, sweet, slightly tart, with a complex aftertaste. Everyone who tried it loved it. Everyone was just saying “Wowooo!” 😋

I completely neglected my outdoor tomatoes, I confess 😳 When I finally started tending to them in August, I accidentally snapped a branch off the Candy Sweet Icicle. Just looking at that branch, you can see how productive it is.
This was the only tomato I didn’t even attempt to prune. It grew however it wanted. It’s basically a miniature cherry bush.

For me, this variety is THE SWEETEST SONG EVER! 👏👏😋😋

Candy Sweet Icicle – yes, they weren’t named candy for nothing! Very sweet, crisp, with a pronounced flavor and a fruity aftertaste. A beautiful and very productive variety with pearly pink icicle-shaped fruits with a pointed tip!

I actually grew plants that produced different colored fruits—outdoors I had a few plants with the delicate pearly-pink fruits, and in the greenhouse, I had one plant with dark chocolate-red fruits (which is the original Brad Gates version).

The fruits are firm, with a tough skin and thick flesh; they are great for canning and as an ornament for any salad. It’s a mid-early variety, performed wonderfully both in the greenhouse and outdoors. There is really no need to prune it—all the fruits have plenty of time to ripen on the plant before the end of the season.

Edited December 1, 2018 by Yaroslavna

Mine is definitely NOT a determinate. One of the Moscow girls passed the seeds to me via Lyudasik.

It grew over 1.5 meters (5 ft) tall outdoors.

A very tasty cherry. Bright aroma, sweet, almost zero acidity. I also grew both versions: the red-pink with yellow streaks and the red-green (dark) ones. I felt that the darker red-green ones had a more interesting flavor profile.

Is Candy Sweet Icicle just as good in terms of yield, ripening time, and flavor as Blush?

Has anyone grown them side by side and compared them?

On 8/31/2019 at 16:41, Sergey-EKB said:
Is Candy Sweet Icicle just as good in terms of yield, ripening time, and flavor as Blush?

I grew both varieties this season, and both get an A+ for taste, beauty, and yield! So sweet! They also seemed to start ripening at the exact same time. Candy Sweet Icicle makes for a taller bush in the greenhouse; it is currently still producing right under the greenhouse roof. I’m growing it in 4 stems. Seeds were from Yaroslavna (the pink version).

By the way, this variety has a dwarf equivalent — Maglia Rosa. It stays around 50cm (1.6 ft) outdoors and about a meter (3 ft) in the greenhouse, and is just completely smothered in sweet, pink striped icicles.

Edited August 31, 2019 by Svetikk

On 8/31/2019 at 17:27, Svetikk said:
I grew both varieties this season, and both get an A+ for taste, beauty, and yield! So sweet!

Svetlana, thank you so much for the answer.

I think this will be useful information not just for me.

And your photos always turn out so artistic—like a still-life painting!

An excellent cherry for the open ground. I grew both color versions in 2019 (the chocolate-red with green stripes and the pink with pearly-yellow stripes), seeds from Kulik. Very productive, but even outdoors the bushes grew much taller than the 60cm stated in the catalog—about twice as tall, actually. I practically didn’t prune them at all; they set a ton of fruit and barely dropped any blossoms even in the heat.

The fruits are incredibly sweet, a bit crisp, but the skin is thick and slightly tough. If you let them overripen a bit, the flesh becomes incredibly tender and “jammy,” which some people here love, but I personally prefer the firmer stage—it tastes richer and sweeter. We picked them as they ripened, so I don’t have any photos of fully ripe whole trusses.

I should note that due to a series of events, I didn’t sow some of my seeds until April 7th, 2019! Candy Sweet Icicle included. They sprouted around April 9-10 and went into the ground on May 11th. May was warm, so all the seedlings were planted out very early. They were started under grow lights and hardened off in the greenhouse. Planted directly outdoors with no cover. I picked the first ripe ones on July 12, 2019; the average weight was 20g+. So the variety is actually quite early—only 94 days from germination.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Oksana Evgenievna

Here are photos from July 12.

And mixed with other cherries (Pear Orange, Gardenberry F1, Mirabella, and Candy Sweet Icicle) harvested from the open ground on July 27, 2019. It’s a 2.5-liter bowl. I was picking on the run, grabbing whatever was at hand in the evening dusk after work just for a snack, so naturally not all the ripe cherries were picked off the bush.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Oksana Evgenievna

Mine grew very tall in the greenhouse. They completely live up to their name; by the end of the season, they were as sweet as berries.

I finally got to try these candy-icicles! I loved them so much! They are so sweet that they don’t even taste like tomatoes. I’m absolutely thrilled. The bushes are already as tall as me, but the vines are thin and compact, and they set fruit well. They just ripen so slowly, only one or two at a time, and you just want a ton of them all at once. The color is pearly-red with yellow-green streaks. Beautiful.

On 7/14/2020 at 00:03, Irina Fedorova said:
The color is pearly-red with yellow-green streaks. Beautiful.

Irina, do you have a photo so we can see the color?

Here are the candies, although my phone camera doesn’t capture the color perfectly.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Irina Fedorova

On 8/31/2019 at 17:27, Svetikk said:
Seeds from Yaroslavna (the pink version).

Candy Sweet Icicle. This year, to pair with the pink version, I also grew the brown/dark one. Tasty, sweet, beautiful, and productive. The bush in the greenhouse grows in multiple stems like an indeterminate with moderate growth. Both versions, along with Blush from Remco, have claimed a permanent spot in my collection.

I wasn’t particularly impressed with these icicles, for some reason. I grew the brown version with golden stripes. The yield was super, and they were beautiful. But I didn’t like the taste. Despite the intense sweetness, there was some weird aftertaste that I didn’t like at all. No one else in the family is eating them either. Everyone is gobbling up the Blush and Star Gold. Right now, there is almost a 5-liter (1.3 gal) basin full of them sitting in the shed, and they will probably just go to waste. I haven’t tried the pink version yet.

My yummy treats.

Edited October 1, 2021 by alio-nka

Growing it for the second year. It turned out much more productive on the eastern side, and the bush topped itself at around 1.5m (5 ft).

Our family thought it was sweeter than Blush. It really stands out in salads with its special flavor note. The downside is the thick skin.

Incredibly sweet! You literally just pick them off the bush and eat them like fruit or candy. I had light green ones and dark ones with stripes. The dark ones seemed sweeter to me. I grew them in the greenhouse and outdoors; the outdoor ones were a bit smaller but sweeter. Seeds were from AMINA, a huge thanks to her!

Edited November 8, 2021 by Sveta4476

Here are the dark ones.

Candy Sweet Icicle.

I repeated both versions, they are so yummy 😋 Grew them both in the greenhouse and outdoors, as indeterminates, 4 stems per bush.

Growing Candy Sweet Icicle for the second year. The dark version. It has become our family’s favorite tomato. The first year it wasn’t very productive, but then, grown from my own saved seeds, the yield improved greatly.

And I won’t even mention the appearance—it has an actual metallic sheen. All the neighbors were completely blown away…

It’s not just sweet; it has a rather rich, complex flavor. Before this, our favorite was Chile Verde from Biotekhnika, so we are quite the tomato snobs.

The bush is very frail/wispy, but it fruits all the way until frost. It is mildly susceptible to Leaf Mold (Cladosporium).

The two downsides to the variety are the relatively low yield compared to hybrids, and a rather thick skin. It’s also prone to cracking if watered unevenly.

By the way, we found Blush to be less tasty. And slightly less productive. Although it is more resistant to cracking.

It’s not great for sun-drying—it tastes great, but the skin is just too tough.

This year, I picked an entire washbasin of Candy Sweet Icicles from just five plants all at once. It was an absolute feast.