Chocolate (Shokoladny) Heirloom Tomato Review

The variety is called “Shokoladny” (Chocolate). Seeds are from the “Aelita” company. The description on the packet says:

“Mid-early variety. The plant is semi-determinate, 110-150 cm (3.6-5 ft) tall. The fruits are multi-chambered, flat-round in shape, brown in color, weighing 200-400 g (7-14 oz), very tasty, sweet, and meaty. Intended for growing in film greenhouses and open ground.”

They matched the description perfectly. Very tasty, they were among the first to ripen. By July 9th we were already eating them! 👍 Note: In the last photo, the pink tomato next to them is Rozovyi Myod (Pink Honey) for size comparison.

This is how my Shokoladny turned out (bought the seeds at the market). Terrible, low yield—the photo shows tomatoes from 2 bushes, and the rest were just tiny. I don’t even remember the taste. I still have seeds left from this packet, but I won’t be repeating it. It disappointed me. 🙁

The seeds for my Shokoladny were from the exact same packet as Galina’s. I really liked the variety; it completely matched the description. The tomatoes are tasty and sweet. The variety is highly productive.

I really wanted to grow Shokoladny. For almost a month now, I’ve been watching what is growing in my garden. It is anything but Shokoladny. Seeds are from Aelita. The packet is exactly the same as in the picture above.

But the fruits are plum-shaped (paste tomatoes) and they are all hidden inside the bush, you can’t see anything from the outside. The bush is determinate, and it’s setting fruit like crazy, both in open ground and in the greenhouse. The height is currently about 1.2m (4 ft). I specially counted them on one bush: it has already set 97 fruits and is still blooming heavily. But the tomatoes are small, about 70-80 g (2.5-3 oz).

Quote from kae-2:
It is anything but Shokoladny… the fruits are plum-shaped…

Could you tell me the batch number? I bought the exact same packet (planned to plant it next year), and I wouldn’t want to grow an off-type mix-up.

My seeds are from the same packet and look very similar to Galina’s photos, but I can’t agree that it completely matches the description. The description says the fruits are brown with orange-brown flesh. If you can stretch the imagination to call the outside brown, the inside is nowhere near orange-brown. My flesh is dark crimson, quite firm, very tasty, and aromatic. Everyone loved this tomato, even those who normally oppose “exotic” varieties.

Svetlana, my tomatoes were grown from the exact same batch that gave Irina the plum mix-up. I scanned the packet especially for you. The batch number is 16.543.13.3. Maybe Irina just accidentally got a stray plum seed in her packet, and the rest will be true to type! 👍

Yeah, I had bad luck with Shokoladny… And I planted 5 bushes of it, and even shared seedlings with my neighbor (by the way, she liked this mix-up—she says it’s perfect for canning). Next year I will try from a different batch.

The plum tomatoes I got look very much like the ‘Ira F1’ cherry, they turn red/carmine when fully ripe. The bush is determinate, but it’s already about 1m 70cm (5.5 ft) tall.

Here are my impressions: I chose to plant it based on forum reviews. It grew in open ground, was very tall, definitely an indeterminate. I trained it to a single stem. It’s a mid-season, closer to late-season variety for me, but it was growing in a shaded spot.

It was one of the first to catch Late Blight, but after treatment, it quickly recovered. The fruits are indeed a brown color, of decent taste, but they cracked very, very badly. I would like to try it in a sunny spot because it set fruit well and the taste was pretty good. The fruits looked exactly like Larisa’s.

I had it from Siberian Garden (SibSad) last season. In terms of yield, it was average. Mid-early season, the seedlings grew strong. The taste changed throughout the season; it was balanced, but not particularly sweet under my conditions. The skin is thin, so it’s better not to let them overripen.

Could you please tell me how many stems I can let it grow? This is my first year with a greenhouse, and this is my only indeterminate variety. It just started setting fruit. The description says to train it to only one stem, but what happens if I do 3? The suckers and the main stem aren’t clearly defined in some places. Which part should I break off?

Quote from Ladislav:
Which part should I break off?

If you’re talking about the bush in the photograph, I wouldn’t remove the sucker at this point. But generally, you can see here that the right shoot is the sucker growing just below the flower truss.

Thank you, Elena!

I also really liked the taste! 😋 It didn’t stand out for yield, though, maybe because the seeds were old and only one out of 10 germinated. I saved seeds, and because of the flavor, I will give this variety another chance.

My seeds were from the “Prestige” company. The fruits are round, about 200 g (7 oz), juicy, neither too sour nor bland—everything is perfectly balanced. They became my husband’s favorite tomatoes, despite his strong prejudice against “exotic” colors. I will definitely keep planting them.

In the greenhouse, they started ripening in late July, and in open ground about 2 weeks later. But in open ground, they turned out sweeter and ripened more evenly, although they clearly lost to the greenhouse ones in terms of quantity.

For me this year, it “cracked” before it even managed to fully ripen. Tasty, but not tastier than the Viagra variety.

An excellent tomato from Aelita. A typical indeterminate, I trained it to two stems. It set fruit well, the color is beautiful, it’s productive, great for salads, and even in this cold summer, it was very sweet. The only thing is, it didn’t quite reach the promised 200-400g; most fruits were 150-200 grams (5-7 oz).

Seeds were from Aelita. The bush is vigorous and constantly branches out. Productive, tasty, the fruits are large, the skin is tender, and sometimes they crack. They produced fruit for a long time, and even the ones ripening off the vine indoors remain tasty.

I planted Shokoladny from Aelita in 2017. In terms of appearance, size, and yield, it matched the description, just slightly lighter—a coffee-pink color. But the taste was disgusting—bland, sour, and watery, and it cracked indecently.

After analyzing the situation, I concluded that, first of all, we watered it way too much, and secondly, it lacked nutrients, specifically some trace elements. Black tomatoes are very sensitive to a lack of either magnesium or something similar. That’s why the taste was mediocre. I’ll add that our soil was essentially virgin land—sandy loam that wasn’t depleted, but I didn’t feed the tomatoes with mineral fertilizers in open ground in 2017.

So in 2018, after reading the forum and listening to recommendations, I fed all my plants with organic-mineral fertilizers. I gave them calcium nitrate as a foliar spray, yeast, a humate-phosphorus complex, and scattered complex fertilizers and potassium magnesium (Kalimag) at the end. In short, we fed them properly. The tomatoes were *much* tastier than in 2017!

This is my third year running this variety (Aelita seeds). Last year it was incredibly tasty, very sweet. This year it’s just sweet-and-sour, but still completely delicious.

It grew in open ground under a canopy, height 2m (6.5 ft), trained to 4 stems. I harvested 6.2 kg (13.6 lbs) from the plant—40 fruits, max weight 275g (9.7 oz). They started ripening on July 21st from a March 19th sowing.