Quick Summary of Shokoladniy Zaychik (Chocolate Bunny)
- 🌍 Origin: A highly popular commercial and collector variety from Russia. The name translates to “Chocolate Bunny”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Generally an indeterminate (tall) and extremely vigorous plant. However, growers note it is very sensitive to soil moisture and fertility; in dry, sandy soils, it may act like a determinate and terminate its growth early at 40 cm (16 inches). It produces a massive amount of suckers and can be grown as a multi-stemmed bush (up to 10+ stems).
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Dark brown/mahogany oval or plum-shaped cocktail tomatoes.
- 👅 Flavor & Culinary Use: Flavor reviews are highly polarized. Some find it sweet and fruity, while others call it plain or bland when eaten fresh. However, it is highly praised for canning, pickling, and sun-drying because it fits perfectly in jars and rarely cracks.
- ☔ Growing Quirks: An absolute yield monster (“works like a photocopier”), but it is noted to be highly susceptible to Blossom End Rot (BER) in hot or dry conditions.
- 🕵️♂️ The “Clone” Controversy: Many experienced growers believe this variety is genetically identical to several other dark plums on the market, such as Black Moor (Chernyi Mavr), De Barao Black, Gusev’s Prune (Chernosliv), and Spanish Dark Crimson.
Chocolate Bunny in the catalog on the old forum.
A yummy cherry variety 😋. The taste is very pleasant, sweet with a good tang. The bush is not tall; outdoors in open ground, it was no taller than 70cm (27 in) for me. Very beautiful, smooth, brown little ovals. I liked them very much 👍.
The most productive cocktail tomato variety in my memory 😋 There must have been around 400 fruits on the bush 😲 I picked them, gave them away, processed them, marinated them, and still have a whole tray sitting there 🙌
It grew outdoors, and I barely pruned the suckers. The bush turned out huge and sprawling—I exhausted myself tying it up. It’s an indeterminate; I topped the stems at about a meter (3 ft) so that the last trusses could gain weight by mid-August. The taste seemed a bit plain to me fresh, but they are absolutely perfect for marinating in jars 👍
In the photo, the bush is already heavily picked over:
It is definitely the most productive! By description, mine looked more like the second one (like Svetikk’s): indeterminate, sprawling. But the taste isn’t plain; it’s sweet with a tang. A very good variety.
I planted Chocolate Bunny two years in a row, but in very different parts of the garden. Last year, I planted it in a bed with loose, black soil in a moister spot. The bush was about 1.2 m (4 ft) tall, kept growing and setting fruit until the end of September. It was quite productive and one of the three earliest to ripen. I saved seeds from the best bush (second truss).
This year, on a sandier and drier bed, the bush only grew to 40 cm (16 in) and terminated itself (stopped growing) after the second truss. Accordingly, the yield was very small, and it ripened much later than last year.
It is very tasty when pickled (I make cold-brined tomatoes), and it fills the empty spaces in the jar perfectly. I will definitely keep planting it, but I will take its demands into account—it needs a lot of food and water 😉
Chocolate Bunny is fantastic in canning 👍😋 I’m planting it for the second year. A very productive and unpretentious variety, still ripening on the bush. Here is yesterday’s harvest 😄, next to ‘Blush’ 👍
I also planted Chocolate Bunny this year (seeds from A.I. Kulik). Well, it’s very productive, and I agree with Svetikk—it’s a bit plain fresh, but excellent for canning jars.
Season 2015:
Ordered from Redko.
Grew in the greenhouse. At first, it set fruit poorly, but by mid-summer, it kicked into high gear and produced massive clusters without skipping any. The clusters were even more impressive than De Barao Black (I’m actually wondering which one I’ll plant next year).
The taste has a bit of sweetness, but this year I had many other tastier varieties for fresh eating. However, for sun-drying, it is perfect! I haven’t tried canning it.
If you compare it with De Barao Black—you can’t tell them apart by looks, and the taste is about the same (though this one was a bit plainer for me). But the yield is better because the distance between the trusses is shorter. Conclusion? 😉
Tall, strong bush. Didn’t catch any diseases, didn’t crack. Stores well.
I grew mine outdoors. This is how it turned out. Productive, fell over from the weight of the fruits. Tasty, and a very convenient size for canning.
This is my Bunny. Cold brined/salted—absolutely delicious!
My Black Moor (Chernyi Mavr) is exactly the same as all the photos and descriptions here. And Moor is also often equated to De Barao Black, and Moor is also earlier. Are they triplets?
We need to call in the duplicate expert—Tomatinka.
Quote from Agnija:
My Black Moor is exactly the same… Are they triplets?
No, Moor is different. I don’t remember who, but someone compared them. They say Moor is better than Bunny, and its fruits are slightly different—wider, more barrel-shaped.
I had 3 bushes, and all of them were very productive. An excellent variety. In canning jars alongside yellow ones, they look amazing. I’ll test the taste when I open the jars. Didn’t get sick, didn’t crack. I liked it.
Thanks to Tatyana and Tomatanya for the Chocolate Bunny seedlings:
Grew it outdoors in open ground, and wow, it is something else 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌
In the photo – the second wave is ripening. There were 3 waves in total. At first, I pruned it to 2 stems, and then I just gave up 🤷♀️
The number of fruits defies calculation, and it was one of the first to start ripening.
Good fresh and for canning.
It reminded me of De Barao Black, but more productive. A candidate to be repeated in 2016.
I’ll quote myself 😄
We opened the jars and tried them. Chocolate Bunny and Blush are very tasty canned. Everyone in my family liked them. They don’t fall apart or get mushy/stringy. Blush is sweeter, and Bunny is just beautiful. Honestly, they are tasty. I will plant them again.
There is absolutely no flavor to them when canned, this variety is completely unsuitable for pickling… it lacks the proper aroma. A cherry is just a cherry. You should only eat them fresh in salads in the summer.
Quote from Andrey_K:
this variety is completely unsuitable for pickling…
Are you talking about the Bunny? 🤔 First of all, it’s not a cherry… and secondly, you create the aroma yourself depending on the spices. Everything smells the same in the jar, only the flesh, color, and texture differ. And for me, on the contrary, I didn’t like it in salads. All of mine went straight into the canning jars.
Quote from Ladoga:
Are you talking about the Bunny? 🤔 First of all, it’s not a cherry…
Well, cocktail size… not a big difference… In a jar, everything smells different… The brine might be the same, but the tomatoes taste different depending on the variety. And Bunny in a pickle jar is just nothing. I actively fish it out from among the others periodically. It’s hard to confuse it with others… It’s just not for pickling… absolutely not.
I also really like Chocolate Bunny. Consistently high-yielding, not late, and not disease-prone. When canned, it hardly cracks or turns to mush. Yes, it’s not a salad tomato. But the taste of the marinated ones suits me perfectly. I’ve grown it for 4 years and plan to plant it again in 2016.
I grew Black Moor, Chocolate Bunny, and Spanish Dark Crimson. Visually, the fruits are identical. Taste-wise, I preferred Spanish Dark Crimson—it was denser, had thicker walls, and the flavor seemed more pleasant. The first two taste practically identical.
I’ll continue. The flavor is very fluctuating. It became noticeably tastier in September. And its yield in September was simply magical. I pulled up bushes full of heavy clusters of green tomatoes. The size in the summer was 3-4 cm, but in the fall it reached up to 6 cm. An amazing variety. I will definitely keep it and increase the number of bushes.
Black Moor, Spanish Dark Crimson, and Chocolate Bunny are the exact same variety; I saw no differences. Many write that De Barao Black belongs in this same group too. Which one is the original, and which one is the imposter—that is the question?
