Quick Summary of Elberta Peach (Elberta Persikovaya)
- 🌍 Origin: A beautiful novelty variety known for its fuzzy, silvery-blue “angora” foliage and peach-like fuzzy fruits. Often goes by the name Elberta Girl in some Western collections.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Determinate/Semi-determinate bush type, usually reaching 1 to 1.5 meters (3.2 – 4.9 ft) in height. The foliage is strikingly beautiful, covered in dense silver fuzz, though growers note this fuzz can sometimes catch dirt and debris outdoors.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Stunning red fruits with striking golden/yellow stripes and a slightly fuzzy (velvety) skin, just like a peach. They typically weigh around 100g (3.5 oz).
- 👅 Flavor & Texture: Reviews are very mixed. Some growers find them perfectly balanced, sweet, sour, and meaty with a hint of tropical flavor. Others report a very dense, crunchy texture with a sour profile that is much better suited for pickling and canning than fresh eating.
- 💡 Pro Tip: Because the fuzzy leaves easily trap soil splashing up from the ground, heavy mulching is highly recommended when growing this variety outdoors.
Mid-early variety, bush height up to 1 m (3.2 ft). Fruits weigh about 100 g (3.5 oz), red with golden stripes, leaves and fruits have fuzz. A sweetheart!
I grew it unpruned (didn’t remove the suckers), so it started ripening in mid-to-late August. A sea of fruits.
Both the fruits and the leaves are beautiful. But how does it taste?
Quote by Semechka:
Both the fruits and the leaves are beautiful. But how does it taste?
They turned out to be meaty, sweet-and-sour, I liked them. And there are almost no seeds at all! I’ll have to wait for new ones, there are still a lot hanging on the vine.
But this variety – didn’t impress me at all. Yes, incredibly beautiful seedlings, neat, fluffy, almost blue. But when the bushes are mature, this “fur” becomes untidy, gets dirty, catches debris.
In the open ground, it developed slowly, started to ripen very late, only towards the end of August. The yield was small. The fruits are incredibly dense, sour-ish, and crunch. And that’s even though they fully vine-ripened. I thought maybe if they sit for a while they would gain flavor, but they don’t. They only get softer, but still crunch. The fruits are just slightly velvety, that doesn’t bother me. I put them all into pickling to fill the empty spaces in the jar, since the tomatoes are small. Because of such mediocre taste, I won’t plant them again. I played around with exotics, and that’s enough.
I grew this variety in 2016. Liked it very much!
Seeds from the online store “Happy Garden”. Their description of the variety:
Fruits are red with golden stripes, leaves and fruits are fuzzy. Unique. Mid-early variety, bush height up to 1 m. Fruits weighing about 100 g.
My impressions of the variety: just like in the description – beautiful, striped fruits, very productive! The promised fuzziness of leaves and fruits wasn’t there at first. But it appeared on the leaves at the end of the season, with the onset of cool weather. The taste of the tomatoes is balanced, with sweetness, a sour aftertaste, and a hint of tropical fruits (spicy/tangy). I rated the yield 5+, taste 4++. It grew outdoors in open ground, the bush height was 1.5 m (4.9 ft). By ripening time – mid-season.
I made a note for myself about this variety – plant it for its beauty and yield! 👍
And this is a photo for comparison, 3 varieties: Elberta Peach (the 4 smaller tomatoes), Schimmeig Creg, and Casady’s Folly (the long ones).
