📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Izumrudnaya Grusha (Emerald Pear)
- 🌍 Origin: A Russian heirloom whose name translates to “Emerald Pear”. A very popular Green-When-Ripe (GWR) variety.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall). Typically grows to 6.5 – 10 feet (2-3 m). The foliage is somewhat light and well-behaved, not overly bushy, but also not the weeping “wispy” foliage typical of oxhearts.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Small, elongated pear-shaped tomatoes. They stay green when ripe, often developing a slight yellowish or amber blush. Average weight is around 2 to 3 oz (60-80 g).
- 👅 Flavor: Renowned for being intensely, sometimes cloyingly sweet with a soft, almost jelly-like texture. Best eaten fresh.
- ⚠️ Grower’s Note: The only way to tell if it’s ripe is the “squeeze test” (it gets soft) or looking for the amber blush. Be careful: fully ripe fruits can drop from the vine easily!
A tall, green-fruited, heavy yielder. I grew it in the greenhouse pruned to 2 stems. The fruits are elongated, pear-shaped tomatoes weighing about 2 oz (60 g). They are juicy, sweet, and absolutely delicious! To check for ripeness, you really need to feel them. The fruits get slightly soft to the touch.
Emerald Pear. Height in open ground was about 7.2 feet (220 cm) and it could have kept growing if I hadn’t topped it. Tasty, sweet. The shape varied a bit for me; the lower ones were more oval, and the ones higher up were true pears. My plant wasn’t very wide, I pruned it to 4 stems.
My seed packet says the fruits get up to 3.5 to 6 oz (100-170 g) and that you can grow them sprawling on the ground without staking. Does that mean I don’t need to prune the suckers either?
Mine turned out looking like little pears. Seeds were from Tomatanya. Sweet, I really loved them! As they ripen, they take on a yellowish tint. The weight was around 2.5 oz (70 g). It had very good resistance to Leaf Mold (Cladosporium).
I pruned to 2 stems, and every truss was completely full. I actually used these to make tomato paste for zucchini caviar (my husband is allergic to red tomatoes). The caviar turned out amazingly delicious. He opens a jar, and boom, it’s gone. This variety definitely gets a permanent spot in my greenhouse.
Here is my Emerald Pear.
Viktoria said:
My seed packet says the fruits get up to 3.5 to 6 oz (100-170 g) and that you can grow them sprawling on the ground without staking. Does that mean I don’t need to prune the suckers either?
Izumrudnaya Grusha is an indeterminate. You absolutely must prune the suckers, and it is impossible to grow it just sprawling on the ground. But that’s just my opinion, maybe someone else does it differently. My fruits weighed 2.5 to 2.8 oz (70-80 g). I didn’t have a single tomato larger than that. I could believe someone getting them up to 3.5 oz (100 g), but 6 oz (170 g)? No way, I don’t believe it.
Galya, I agree a million percent with you! 6 ounces is definitely not Emerald Pear!!! And looking at your photos, ours look exactly identical!
Well, that’s just what it says on my commercial seed packet. The vendor is Flora Market. Growing indeterminates sprawling without suckering actually doesn’t bother me. A lot of tall indets grow fine that way here if you have enough space and plant them far apart. But the fruit size discrepancy is interesting. It could be a typo on the packet. Even the picture on the front doesn’t make them look huge. Plus, it says they are good for whole-fruit canning, and 6 oz is probably too big to stuff in a jar anyway.
I guess I’ll see what grows, since I already bought the seeds. But I might need to look for another green variety for canning.
I haven’t tried canning it, we just ate them all fresh. But in my opinion, it’s not a great fit for pickling or canning. It’s way too soft, like sweet jelly.
Viktoria, for canning, put them in the jars at the “firm green” stage. Once they get soft and turn that olive color, eat them fresh!
Elena 62 said:
Hey folks! Nobody mentioned the plant habit. Does it take up a lot of space?
Elena, mine was a light-colored, not-too-vigorous plant. It wasn’t a wispy weeping vine like the oxhearts or liana types, just light. It didn’t take up much space at all. I pruned it to 3 stems. I couldn’t find a picture of the whole plant, but here are the fruits!
Grew it outdoors in 2018. The flavor was on the sweet side, very productive and trouble-free. To be honest, by the time it ripened I was so tired of eating tomatoes that I didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s a bit too soft for my liking, and regular cherries are sweeter anyway (as are some of the black varieties).
But a very funny story happened with this one. I gifted a couple of seedlings of this variety to my cousin’s mother-in-law, who also has a garden. I warned her immediately (and it was written on the cups) that this is a Green-When-Ripe variety, it won’t turn red, etc.
Well, when they were planting them out in their permanent spot, a strong gust of wind blew all the plastic cups away. Long story short, they lost track of what was planted where. Around New Year’s, I was chatting with Nina Vasilievna (the mother-in-law) about the past season, and she laughing told me about this amazing variety with green pear-plums. She said it was so sweet and delicious. She said she waited and waited forever for these little plum-pears to finally turn red, but they just wouldn’t. Finally, she lost her patience. She noticed they felt soft to the touch, picked one, took a bite and WOW! Flavor explosion! 😁
She couldn’t remember the name of the variety for the life of her, but she saved seeds because she loved it so much. All her neighbors and friends who tried this sweet green tomato were absolutely amazed and begged for a tomato to save seeds from! 😁
By the way, outdoors in the dirt, the plant doesn’t get too tall and isn’t aggressive at all. It’s a very neat, compact plant.
Delicious. Almost cloyingly sweet. Out of everything I grew this year, this was the absolute sweetest. Heavy yielder and trouble-free. One downside: if you harvest them to counter-ripen indoors alongside other tomatoes of similar shapes but traditional colors, it can be really hard to tell when these are actually ripe.
I read the reviews back in 2019 and dreamed that this variety would become a staple for me. I really wanted a green cherry for my collection. Looks-wise, I got perfect emerald pears (2 plants, open ground): medium height, regular leaf, pear shape, green with dark green shoulders. But the content inside… 😭 Total disappointment of the year.
That “jelly” texture everyone mentions is actually just mush. It’s literally puree inside a skin. I splashed juice all over three of my t-shirts before I got used to eating them.
The flavor was non-existent. Bland, cottony, with that distinct bitterness that some green varieties get (Green Grape pulled the same trick on me last year – it was tasty for maybe 1 or 2 weeks in late August, and bitter the rest of the time).
It also has a massive tendency for fruit drop, either naturally or due to the heat. This is common for yellow/green pear varieties. The wind literally blew all my lower trusses right off the vine! So, checking for ripeness by “squeezing” them is highly not recommended, because they fall off even when unripe. How are you even supposed to tell when they are ready?!
The plant is fairly disease-resistant, but doesn’t handle heat and wind well. It grows modestly, doesn’t go crazy with suckers like some indecent cherry tomatoes do. Fruit size is unstable, ranging from classic cherry size to fairly large cocktail tomatoes.
I don’t know why Emerald Pear and I didn’t get along. It was a tough year, but all my other cherries behaved perfectly fine. What a pity.
Liaro said:
The flavor was non-existent. Bland, cottony, with that distinct bitterness that some green varieties get.
I have never in my life tasted a tomato that was bitter. Elena (@Liaro), perhaps your climate or soil just wasn’t suitable for bringing out the optimal flavor of these green-fruited varieties. Or maybe it just comes down to personal preference for taste and texture.
I grew Emerald Pear in a pot at work in 2015. It was delicious and I liked it, but since it was in a pot pruned to 2 stems, the yield was pretty low. I guess tall indeterminates in pots that size need to be fed fertilizer more often and watered better. Yes, I do remember that the fruits dropped off easily, even when unripe. Overall, I had a good impression of the variety. Good, but not enough of it. I’m thinking about it again this year, as with all GWR varieties, they are much less tempting for tomato thieves! If I grow it, it will be in the open dirt and pruned to at least 3 stems.
Katya iz Kieva said:
I have never in my life tasted a tomato that was bitter… perhaps your climate or soil just wasn’t suitable.
Why assume something went wrong if you’ve simply never tried a bitter tomato yourself? 🙂
A certain percentage of GWR (Green-When-Ripe) varieties develop a nasty, astringent “bitter” aftertaste if you taste them slightly underripe or if you harvest them at the breaker stage and counter-ripen them indoors on a windowsill. This is a genetic trait specific to certain varieties, not an issue with growing techniques or personal bias. I am a huge fan of “greens,” and the other half of GWR varieties consistently do not have this aftertaste: when underripe, they just taste like normal underripe tomatoes, and they counter-ripen indoors to a perfectly normal flavor.
In my climate, it is absolutely crucial that a variety has a decent flavor starting from the breaker stage, and that it counter-ripens indoors without playing a game of “bitter or not bitter” roulette.
Ahhh, Elena (@Liaro), thank you, now that makes total sense. So they get bitter during indoor counter-ripening. I didn’t realize from your previous post that you were counter-ripening all your tomatoes off the vine!
There are two very interesting points in this thread that deserve a quick explanation for American growers:
1. “Zucchini Caviar” (Kabachkovaya Ikra): Zolushka mentions making tomato paste for Zucchini Caviar. Don’t worry, there’s no fish involved! In Russia and Eastern Europe, “vegetable caviar” is a deeply traditional, heavily roasted and pureed vegetable spread usually made from zucchini or eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, and onions. It is pressure-canned for the winter and eaten on bread.
2. The Great GWR Bitterness Debate: Elena (Liaro) and Katya’s debate highlights a known issue with some Green-When-Ripe heirlooms. In short-season climates (like much of Russia), growers are often forced to harvest tomatoes at the “breaker stage” (when they just begin to change color) to save them from frost, letting them ripen indoors on the counter. While red or pink heirlooms counter-ripen wonderfully, certain GWR varieties (like Green Grape or apparently Emerald Pear) develop an astringent, slightly bitter compound when ripened off the vine. If you grow this variety, try to leave it on the vine until you feel that soft, jelly-like give!
