Izumrudnoe Yabloko (Emerald Apple) Tomato Review & Photos

Emerald Apple from the old forum catalog.

An old timer in my collection. It is probably one of the very first green-fruited varieties from the Soviet era. 🌺

Mid-height, suitable for hoop houses and open ground. The ripe fruits have a beautiful emerald color, weights reach 7 to 10.5 oz (200-300 g), round and uniform. The flesh is jelly-like, very pleasant taste, there is definitely sweetness there.

I came back to growing this variety this summer. I just really like it!

I agree with Natalya Pavlovna, it is a worthy variety. The taste really is very pleasant. I grew it outdoors in the dirt. Even during this difficult summer, it showed excellent yield potential. The only downside is that it has almost zero shelf life, it spoils very fast. It has less sweetness than Malakhitovaya Shkatulka (Malachite Box) and Green Giant, but I still like it a lot 👍

I absolutely love Emerald Apple, I even had ones hitting 14 oz (400 g). I also echo the comments about the yield. Grew in the greenhouse, height was 5 feet (1.5 m). Taste-wise it is sweet. For me it tastes better than Malachite Box, the skin isn’t as tough and it gets this amazing yellow-emerald color when ripe, it looks like it’s glowing 🌺

Here it is again, the Apple 🌺

Wow, it really does glow with this magical light, very pleasing to the eye! 🌺 Never noticed it before 🤫 Putting it back on my planting list!

I’ve been growing the Emerald Apple variety for several years. I plant it in the hoop house. The bush always grows over 6.5 feet (2 m) tall. I run it to 1-2 stems and constantly prune the suckers. Last year the soil in my new hoop house was terrible, so the leaves got a yellowish tint (happened to other varieties too). I kept feeding the bushes with wood ash tea. The yield ended up being pretty good, the fruits were quite large as usual at 5.3-7 oz (150-200 g) and very tasty.

Emerald Apple. Mid-height indet. Grew in the greenhouse without much care or watering. It didn’t crack and didn’t catch any diseases. Average weight was 5.3-7 oz (150-200 g). Pleasant taste, noticeable sweetness with just a very slight hint of acidity.

I planted store-bought seeds from Biotekhnika last year. I didn’t like them at all. I’ll plant it again this year, but with proven seeds from Olga (Olena) 😉 Hoping to get beauties just like hers 🙂

Nadya, could you share some details on why you didn’t like them (I bought the exact same packet).

Tanya45: Nadya, could you share some details on why you didn’t like them (I bought the exact same packet).

They were tiny (none over 2.8-3.5 oz / 80-100 g), sour, and the yield was terrible. I had 2 bushes in the greenhouse and both performed exactly the same. Maybe I just got an off-type batch of seeds 🙂

My variety segregated. I have ones like in the photos above, with a pronounced dark green part of the fruit. But one bush is totally different. It throws very bright, emerald fruits that look like they have dark green “threads” drawn on them. The truss is very weird too, it looks like a branching sucker. I snipped off the ends of the shoots. Is this a crossed seed, or does this happen with this variety?

Alyona Latvia: My variety segregated… one bush is totally different, it throws very bright, emerald fruits that look like they have dark green “threads” drawn on them. The truss is very weird too, it looks like a branching sucker…

I’ve only ever seen stripes like that on dark-fruited varieties. Probably a cross-pollination, or a seed from a different variety slipped in by mistake. Or maybe it’s supposed to be like that (a trait of the variety)?

Some varieties, when overfed with nitrogen, push out a new vegetative shoot right from the end of the flower truss (which is what happened to all my indets this year after I fed them a yeast wash a month ago). A couple of leaves appear at the end of the cluster, followed by another set of flowers. I snip these “vegetative truss shoots” off because they suck energy from the plant, and it reduces fruit weight, though only slightly for some varieties. Last year my mom didn’t trim them, and by the end of the season, those “truss shoots” starting from the fourth truss had grown all the way down to the dirt. Trying to tie them up and manage them was a massive headache.

Alisa: Such stripes on tomatoes I’ve only seen on black varieties… Some varieties, when overfed with nitrogen, push out a new vegetative shoot…

The seeds were from a commercial packet. I planted 3 bushes. 2 gave me standard fruits, not very bright and oblate. One turned out like this. Bright green color, stripes, and the shape is almost completely round.

However, all three bushes look identical in terms of height and vigor. They are all short, moderately vigorous, definitely not overfed or pushing too much foliage. They all set their first truss (this weird one, by the way, has the most uneven fruit set, while the other bushes set their first trusses perfectly), and the leaves look similar.

I’ll keep an eye on it. The picture on the seed packet actually showed a round, light-green fruit that looked nothing like either of these. I don’t have anything similar growing in my garden this year, so it’s either a “glitch” from the seed company or a cross-pollination “gift.”

I had a whole bunch of bumblebees working in the greenhouse today. It’s a good thing the first trusses are already set, otherwise they’d cross-pollinate everything, bumblebees are notorious for that 🙂

Alyona Latvia: The seeds were from a commercial packet… One turned out like this. Bright green color, stripes, and the shape is almost completely round.

The stripes might fade and turn whitish as the tomato ripens, like in this photo, the tomato on the right (from Yaroslavna’s first post).

Or they might stay… Intriguing!

Alisa: The stripes might fade and turn whitish… Or they might stay… Intriguing!

You can see some faint striping here too, but the shape… 🤷‍♀️ Photo from the old forum back in 2012, user inciitisxxl.

Alyona Latvia: You can see some faint striping here too, but the shape… 🤷‍♀️

Mine had stripes on them too, but as they ripened the stripes faded. And the shape was exactly like the photo above.

elena1984: Mine had stripes on them too, but as they ripened the stripes faded, and the shape was exactly like the photo above.

Lena, my photo was taken on the 26th. I checked on that fruit today. Over the last few days it grew bigger and lost a tiny bit of its intense color, but it is still striped.

I’ll try to track the progress of this bush. I’m curious myself. The other bushes have classic oblate fruits that vaguely remind me of Malakhitovaya Shkatulka. Less pleated, but generally similar. The bush itself looks totally different from MS though – it’s shorter, the foliage is weaker, and the leaf color is a bit lighter green.

Update on the “stripey” one. The shape is flattening out into an oblate form, the color is slightly paler, but the stripes are still there. Photo from July 3rd.

The fruits on the other bushes look noticeably different. July 3rd photo.

By the way, the biggest fruit in this cluster had to be tossed out. It got gray mold due to the cold weather 😠

Alyona Latvia: Update on the “stripey” one. The shape is flattening out into an oblate form, the color is slightly paler, but the stripes are still there. Photo from July 3rd.

Not surprising at all. The striping is determined by the gs (green stripe) gene – radial green stripes on the epidermis of unripe fruit.

Drosera: Not surprising at all. The striping is determined by the gs (green stripe) gene…

So it turns out that out of three plants, this gene is only present (or active) in one of them. Which one do we consider the “variety standard”? The one with the active gene or without? The outward appearance of the plants “with the gene” is very different, and not primarily because of the stripes, but because of the intensely emerald color of the unripe fruit. The stripes just highlight its uniqueness. You can easily see the color difference even in these photos (taken with a phone, not a real camera).

Emerald Apple isn’t listed in the State Register, so nobody knows exactly what the “standard” is supposed to be.

Besides, the intensity of the color on an unripe fruit usually isn’t one of the defining characteristics of a variety.

Here’s a photo of the striped fruit at full ripeness. The color is pretty accurate (maybe lacking a tiny bit of intensity, but the tone is correct). The fruits on this bush are oblate and have a much more uniform shape than the ones on the second bush without stripes (I’ll post photos of those a bit later). So, here is the striped fruit.

Taste-wise, I give it a 4. I tried it side-by-side with an off-type Purple Russian, and I actually liked that one better because it was meatier and had a nice granular texture. But there are still plenty of fruits on the bushes, so my opinion might easily change.

Alyona, wait, isn’t it supposed to be a green-fruited variety? 😲 Emerald… Apple…

AleksandrS: Alyona, wait, isn’t it supposed to be a green-fruited variety? 😲 Emerald… Apple…

She got a packet with crossed seeds.

Alyona Latvia: The seeds were from a commercial packet. I planted 3 bushes. 2 gave me standard fruits… One turned out like this.

AleksandrS: Alyona, wait, isn’t it supposed to be a green-fruited variety? 😲 Emerald… Apple…

I was just tracking the progress of this one specific mater, like I promised, which grew from a commercial packet labeled Emerald Apple. This fruit stood out immediately, even though the plants themselves looked identical (at least if you ignore the flower trusses, they are very similar). By the way, it grew very nicely, sized up fast, and the color is a 1-to-1 match with Purple Russian. I have a lot of other dark (black and purple) varieties growing, but nothing quite like this (round/striped, no shoulders, short plant). And when I picked it off the bush it was pure emerald, yellow-green, and suspiciously firm. But after sitting in a basket for a week, it suddenly… got a purple blush 🙂

Alyona Latvia: I was just tracking the progress of this one specific mater, like I promised…

Got it, already explained 🌺

Planted it for the first time in 2015, and I’ll definitely keep planting it. After trying EA I went out and bought even more green varieties. It stored decently well, as long as you pick it before it’s overripe and handle it gently. But it does terrible in transport.

Grew it for the first time in 2015. Seeds from “Udachnye Semena”. It turned out to be more of a late-season variety for me, grew to 5 feet (1.5 m). Grown to 1 stem it gave me 5 trusses = 16 tomatoes. Grown to 2 stems it gave me 20-24 tomatoes. Emerald flesh, about half the size of Malachite Box, pleasant taste, and hangs pure green on the vine for a loooong time.

Emerald Apple 2015 (my own saved seeds, my greenhouse is shady). Emerald Apple 2016 (son-in-law’s greenhouse, sunny spot) (probably Biotekhnika seeds). Interesting difference, but it looks like it’s within the normal range for the variety.

Alyona Latvia: My variety segregated… The truss is very weird too, it looks like a branching sucker, I snipped off the ends of the shoots. Is this a crossed seed, or does this happen with this variety?

I also have a truss exactly like that.

I had a truss like that on my Green Zebra this year. My Emerald Apple was a total fail this year. I didn’t start seedlings for it, and the ones planted outdoors in the dirt weren’t great. But since I had about 10 bushes of it, I still had way too many tomatoes. And for some reason they weren’t as purely green as last year, there was a lot more yellow in them…

The Emerald Apple variety gave me another heavy yield in my hoop house during the 2016 season. The bushes were 5-6.5 feet (1.5-2 m) tall.

Planted EA for the first time in 2016. Out of all the green varieties I’ve tried, I’ve never eaten anything more repulsive. Maybe it was an off-type, but it was absolutely disgusting 😝 Small, sour, very few fruits, which was actually a blessing, ugh. It doesn’t look anything like the photos in this thread, only the emerald color matches. You couldn’t even eat it mixed into a salad.

Mine were very sweet, even the ones that counter-ripened in boxes in the fall of 2015.

Planted one bush outdoors in the dirt. Ran it to three stems, which I topped in early August. It was incredibly productive, probably my second heaviest yielder after Black Icicle (which was in the greenhouse). It pumped out 6.5 trusses of large tomatoes: the biggest berry was 1.4 lbs (640 g), and the smallest one in the photo with Golden Bull is about 5.3 oz (150 g). On average, the tomatoes were 12-14 oz (350-400 g).

Photos taken on 08/11. The first truss was already completely eaten so it didn’t make the shot – in the second photo you can see the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and part of the 6th truss.

The bush pushed a ton of megablooms. I pinched them off at first, then just gave up, and it grew fruits out of every single one of them. The Apple proved to be resistant to Late Blight, even when a Fantastika F1 bush planted right next to it got sick.

About the taste: we diligently ate these tomatoes for a long time – the taste was the most ordinary, generic tomato flavor ever. No fruity notes, no extra acidity, just nothing special. Then I realized that this whole time we had been eating them underripe! One of the biggest tomatoes sat in the house for two weeks, completely bronzed up over time)) and developed a faint hint of a blush on one side… Let me tell you, it was absolutely delicious 😞 too bad it was the last one.

My very first green tomatoes. A pleasant and tasty discovery of the 2016 season. Loved them for the yield and taste. I can’t really describe the flavor accurately, but I can say one thing: after eating one slice, your hand automatically reaches for the next one.

Didn’t really like the taste, I replaced it in my garden with Gostinets.

I grew it in 2017, seeds from Biotekhnika. The fruits were small at 3.5 oz (100 g), and the plant height was about 3 feet (100 cm). Taste was decent, but it definitely loses to Gostinets, Cherokee Green, Boloto (Swamp), Lyagushka Tsarevna (Frog Princess), Irish Liqueur, and Malakhitovaya Shkatulka. Gostinets is a good one, I kept that one in my rotation.

First year growing tomatoes, I really wanted a green-fruited variety. I bought Emerald Apple and didn’t regret it. The seeds were from Gavrish. The bush was short, under 3 feet (1 m), the fruits were all uniform and slightly ribbed. I liked the taste (maybe just because I haven’t tried many others 😂). Honestly, you can just eat them straight like an apple – very interesting flavor with a fruity note.

Planted in 2018. Outdoors in the dirt, Gavrish seeds. Excellent variety for our conditions. Very heavy yielder even with practically zero maintenance and no proper pruning. Mine grew sprawling on the ground (or more accurately, a massive mop of foliage), because at first I had nothing to tie it to, and later it was just impossible to manage. I didn’t count how many trusses one bush threw, but it was definitely no less than 4.

All the tomatoes were large, over 7 oz (200 g). They ranged from 7 to 15 oz (200 to 426 g). Tasty. Very early variety, outdoors it started ripening right after Batyanya. The taste is really good, classic tomato with sweetness (even when picked slightly unripe), but when it fully ripens and the skin turns almost bronze – it is incredibly tasty and really does have a fruity note. Picked the first one on 07/16 from a 03/21 seed start and plant out date around 05/21. Fruit shape is a very uniform oblate for the most part. Trusses hold 5-6 tomatoes.

This variety made it into my personal Top 10 out of 64 varieties planted. My mom loved it, and my dad even forgave its non-standard color just because of how low maintenance, productive, and tasty it is. 😁 I’m repeating it this year from the same Gavrish packet. Photo wouldn’t load due to restrictions, wanted to post the first tomato I picked.

Ah, here is my mater. The rest of them were even prettier.

Grew it outdoors in the dirt in 2019. The variety didn’t turn out early for me and the bushes got hit by Late Blight, which I think is the only reason the fruits tasted ordinary. I will absolutely plant it again. All the bushes I planted stayed short (around 4 feet / 1.2 m) and were absolutely plastered with tomatoes. The yield was 3-4.4 lbs (1.4-2 kg) per bush (would have been more if not for the blight). Average tomato weight was 9 oz (250 g).

Even when they fully counter-ripened in the box, they stayed completely pure green (other green varieties turn yellow or even get a pink blush when ripening). Rated it 4 out of 5, or 9 out of 10 (to be exact).

EvgeniyaM: Didn’t really like the taste, I replaced it in my garden with Gostinets.

I second that. Planted both varieties in ’17. Both are tasty, but Gostinets won by a narrow margin.

Voted 5 stars. I’m usually highly skeptical of “greens”. But since I was sent the seeds, I figured “they wouldn’t steer me wrong.”

Excellent mater. From 100% germination, to healthy seedlings, to being completely low-maintenance in the garden. Grew in absolute baking heat, in a neglected spot with sandy soil. Taste is excellent, sweet with a bit of tartness. For the sake of variety in the garden… why not 🙂

The ripe tomato really does get a purple blush, like a smoky brown, and the skin looks almost pearlescent. I thought it was an off-type, but other folks on the forum also say ripe Emerald Apple turns brown. The shoulders stay green.

Melisssa: I thought it was an off-type, but other folks on the forum also say ripe Emerald Apple turns brown.

EA’s skin doesn’t turn brown, it gets an olive hue. It gets golden or bronzed, but definitely not brown.