📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Detskiy Sladkiy “Slivka” (Children’s Sweet Plum)
- 🌍 Origin: Сommercial variety exclusively released by the “Aelita” seed company. The name translates to “Children’s Sweet ‘Plum'”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Super-determinate, low-growing bush. Officially listed at 20 inches (50 cm), but can grow slightly taller and wider in a greenhouse. Requires zero pruning/suckering!
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Tiny, firm, oval/plum-shaped red cherry tomatoes weighing around 0.5-1 oz (15-30 g). They feature a “jointless” pedicel (the green stem stays on the vine when you pick them).
- 👅 Flavor & Use: Despite the “sweet” in the name, growers note it has a classic, solid tomato flavor rather than being overly sugary. The dense texture makes it absolutely perfect for canning whole in jars.
- 💡 Grower Secret: Because it stays incredibly short and finishes fruiting early, it makes a phenomenal “understory” crop to plant underneath your tall indeterminate vines in a greenhouse!
Children’s Sweet Plum (from Aelita-Extra). Description from the packet:
An excellent early-ripening variety for open ground. Trusses hold 8-10 plum-shaped fruits weighing 1 oz (30 g) – they are uniform, jointless (stems don’t detach with the fruit), and very decorative. The bush is low-growing (up to 20 inches / 50 cm), super-determinate. The plant limits its own growth and requires absolutely no pruning, suckering, or staking. The variety can handle heavy fruit loads and gives up its harvest very quickly. Recommended for whole-fruit canning and fresh consumption. The AELITA company is the exclusive seller of tomato seeds for the “Children’s Sweet Plum” variety.
My 2 bushes in the greenhouse did not turn out small; they were quite sprawling, reached up to 24 inches (60 cm), and definitely required good staking. They grew very fast during the seedling stage.
I didn’t prune the suckers at all. From those 2 bushes, I harvested a massive washbasin full of tiny, oval, firm red tomatoes weighing 0.5-0.7 oz (15-20 g). It is an incredibly productive and quite early variety. These bushes, along with the “Iyunskiy” (June) variety, finished fruiting and were yanked out earlier than anything else in the greenhouse. The taste isn’t particularly sweet, but it has a very good, solid tomato flavor, and thanks to its firmness, it’s perfect for canning in jars. A very worthy variety, I highly recommend it 🎩
Edited November 30, 2015 by Svetikk
I described my experience growing this specific variety indoors on a windowsill during the winter in this thread here:
https://www.tomat-pomidor.com/newforum/index.php/topic,2046.0.html#top
Quote from Svetikk:
…The bush is low-growing (up to 20 inches / 50 cm), super-determinate. The plant limits its own growth and requires absolutely no pruning or staking……My 2 bushes in the greenhouse did not turn out small; they were quite sprawling, reached up to 24 inches (60 cm), and definitely required good staking…
Svetikk, did you dedicate “full-sized” spots in the greenhouse for them, or did you plant them “at the feet” of your indeterminates?
I’m kind of interested in trying these now 😉
Quote from AlexanderS:
Svetikk, did you dedicate “full-sized” spots in the greenhouse for them, or did you plant them “at the feet” of your indeterminates?
They got a full-sized tomato spot – but yes, right at the feet of the indeterminates 😂 Right next to the walkway aisle.
While you can plant varieties like “Iyunskiy” (June) very close together, you can’t do that with this variety – in the greenhouse, the bush gets very wide and sprawling, so it needs a full-sized footprint. BUT, because it stays so short, you can lean a flexible tall indeterminate right over the top of it near the greenhouse ceiling! I had a multi-stemmed Flashentomaten growing right behind it, and it just claimed all the empty vertical space above this one.
This is a real workhorse variety 😊. I picked the first tomatoes off it in the hoop house on June 8th, and when I was clearing out the hoop house at the end of September, it was STILL loaded with fruit. I pruned the suckers on one bush, and left the other completely unpruned. The unpruned one turned into an absolute jungle of suckers, but there was a massive amount of tomatoes on it. They aren’t large, making them excellent for pickling/canning 👍 The flavor is a solid tomato taste – not empty/bland, no fancy nuances, but perfectly decent.
👨🌾 Editor’s Greenhouse Grow Hack:
Planting “At the Feet”: Alexander asks Svetlana if she planted this variety “v nogi” (at the feet) of her indeterminates. Since greenhouse space is extremely valuable in cold Russian climates, growers rarely waste vertical space. They often plant a row of tall, indeterminate vining tomatoes toward the back of the bed, and then plant a row of super-determinate, ultra-short dwarfs (like this variety) right in front of them along the aisle. The dwarfs stay low (at the “feet” of the tall plants), produce an early flush of tomatoes, and are then yanked out by mid-summer, allowing the tall vines behind them to take over the rest of the season!
