Quick Summary of Elegant
- 🌍 Origin & Naming Confusion: “Elegant” is a name shared by several completely different tomato strains in the Russian/Ukrainian seed market. This forum thread is highly valuable because it breaks down the differences between the commercial version and the private collector versions.
- 🍅 Strain 1 (Commercial / SibSad variety): A mid-early determinate (bush) variety. Outdoors, it grows to 52-65 cm (20-25 inches) and requires no pruning. In a greenhouse, it reaches 1.2-1.4 meters (4-4.5 ft) and should be pruned to 2 stems. Produces cuboid-oval, smooth red fruits weighing 70-120g (2.5-4.2 oz) outdoors and up to 180g (6.3 oz) indoors. Crack-resistant and tasty.
- 🍅 Strain 2 (Ruslan Sirotin’s collection): This is the variety pictured in the photos below. It produces highly elongated, red “sausage-shaped” paste tomatoes. The bush is about 70 cm (2.3 ft) tall. Known for being very sweet and extremely abundant.
- 🍅 Strain 3 (Kulik’s collection): A mid-late variety. Plants grow to 1 m (3.2 ft) with very vigorous foliage. Produces larger 200g (7 oz) fruits with thick walls, almost no juice, and very few seeds (a classic dry paste tomato).
- 💡 Pro Tip: When trading or buying “Elegant” seeds, always ask the vendor for the fruit shape (cuboid vs. elongated) to ensure you know which strain you are getting!
Description from the seed packet:
Mid-early (fruit ripening begins 100 days from full germination) variety, intended for growing in open ground and film greenhouses. Bush height is 52-65 cm (20-25 inches) in open ground, you can skip pruning suckers; in greenhouses, the height reaches 120-140 cm (4-4.5 ft), and it should be trained to 2 stems. The fruit is cuboid-oval, smooth, dense, and crack-resistant. The color of the ripe fruit is red, fruit weight is 70-120 g (2.5-4.2 oz) in open ground, 150-180 g (5.3-6.3 oz) in greenhouses.
Elegant from Ruslan Sirotin:
Photo author: Svetlyachok-plyus
In the photo, it’s not cuboid-oval… more like sausage-oval 😄
And Gusev’s Elegant is completely different altogether.
I have seeds of Elegant from Kulik, the description is like this:
Mid-late, 1 m (3.2 ft) tall, fruits 200 g (7 oz), extremely vigorous bushes, thick skin, almost no juice and seeds.
This particular Elegant I had was from Ruslan Sirotin. A very abundant, sweet little sausage. The bush was slightly above 70cm (28 inches) tall.
But the one from the SibSad seed packet fully matched their description. Short-growing, no-prune, very productive 🙌 and tasty 😋. Overall, great 👍.
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