Quick Summary of Cherry Safari
- 🌍 Origin: A beautiful and productive cherry tomato variety actively shared and grown among Russian and Eastern European heirloom collectors.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Highly versatile. When grown outdoors in open ground, the plants stay relatively compact, reaching about 80-100 cm (2.5-3.5 ft) in height, and only require pruning up to the first flower cluster. In a greenhouse, it can be grown taller and trained to a single stem. It adapts well to dense planting (e.g., two plants per planting hole).
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Stunning, very small, gem-like cherry tomatoes with a distinctive striped/mottled appearance. They feature a remarkably dense, thick skin that prevents splitting.
- 👅 Flavor & Usage: Renowned for a sweet, tasty flavor. Because the fruits are very tiny and have a strong skin, they are the absolute perfect “gap fillers” for canning. Growers love stuffing them into the empty spaces of jars when pickling larger tomatoes.
- ⏳ Maturity: Can perform as a mid-to-late season variety, especially if the seedlings start out weak, but yields consistently until the end of the season.
🍅 Grown this variety? Click here to add your own photos and review below!
Natalia shared the seeds with me.
It grew outdoors in open ground, the bushes were about 80-100 cm (2.5 – 3.5 ft) tall. I pruned the suckers (side shoots) up to the first flower cluster.
Tasty, beautiful cherry tomatoes. They have a dense, thick skin. I stuffed them into all my canning jars along with other tomatoes to fill the empty voids. In the winter, we will try how they taste in the marinade.
Tasty, but not enough 😳 I mean, they are tiiiny.
Seeds were from Vera (Tomatinka).
Growing in the greenhouse. I am training it to a single stem, but there are two bushes sitting in one planting hole. For me, it turned out to be late-season, but its seedling was very weak at planting time. It is still growing.
Grew outdoors in open ground..
