📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Zolotaya Kanareyka (Golden Canary)
- 🌍 Origin: A highly popular European variety. The name translates to “Golden Canary”, which perfectly describes its bright yellow color and bird-like “beak” on the blossom end.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall) and relatively low maintenance. It can easily reach 6.5 feet (2 m) in a greenhouse. While the main stems aren’t overly thick, the plant produces massive, sweeping multiflora trusses that carry a heavy load of fruit.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Lemon-yellow to golden plum/paste tomatoes with a very distinct pointed tip (nipple/beak). They are small, typically maxing out around 2.5 oz (70 g). Excellent resistance to cracking and Blossom End Rot (BER).
- 👅 Flavor: Highly debated! Fresh off the vine during the summer, many growers find it completely bland and lacking acidity. However, if allowed to ripen off the vine in storage, or if dehydrated into sun-dried tomatoes, it becomes incredibly sweet. It is considered a top-tier variety for whole-fruit canning.
A mid-season variety for open ground and greenhouses. Tall, indeterminate, and very low maintenance. The height in my greenhouse was 6.5 feet (2 m). It produces beautiful, sweeping multiflora trusses loaded with yellow plum tomatoes that have a little pointed beak.
For taste, I give it a 4 minus. For beauty and yield, a solid 5 plus.
Lena, have you tried canning the G. Canary yet?
They look absolutely beautiful in jars. But I haven’t actually tasted the pickled canaries yet 😉.
That’s a beautiful jar, and I’m sure it’ll be delicious!!! 😋 😋 😋
Canary is delicious when canned, especially for people who love soft pickled tomatoes where you can just suck the flesh right out of the skin through a tiny hole. I personally love them like that.
Quote from elena1984: Canary is delicious when canned, especially for people who love soft pickled tomatoes where you can just suck the flesh right out of the skin…
I agree, pickled Canary gets really soft and juicy, you literally suck the whole thing out with a smack in one gulp 😂
This season a gardening friend gave me a spare Canary seedling. It grew outdoors in the open ground to about 5.5 feet (170 cm) and was mercilessly topped. At first, I tried to keep it to two stems, but it eventually turned into 4 or 5 stems anyway. The trusses are incredibly rich, the fruits are juicy, but the taste is honestly mediocre. Everything went straight into canning jars. If I like how they taste this winter, I’ll definitely plant a couple of bushes next year, because they just look so gorgeous in the jars mixed with red tomatoes.
Lena N – Thank you so much for the seeds 😘 It is indescribably beautiful 👍, and I just love the way it curls its sepals upward 😘. This one got a permanent spot on my grow list 🙌. Photos are on the bush from August 8th and sliced open on August 21st.
My Golden Canary grew really sweet. We dehydrated them into sun-dried tomatoes, and man, they were like pure sugar! Very tasty in canning jars too, I preserved them with some basil.
Grew Canary for the first time, very prolific variety. The color wasn’t really golden though, more of a lemon-yellow. A magnificent variety for canning! And I honestly don’t mind throwing them in a fresh salad either, I’m not that picky.
I have Canary too, but it was my first year growing it and the variety just didn’t show its full potential for me. The fruits were tasty, yes. But the fruit set on the trusses was poor, they were really loose and sparse. I’ll repeat it next year. If it performs the same, I won’t plant it again. Compared to Golden Rain (Zolotoy Dozhd), it definitely loses out – just my personal opinion 🙂
Quote from Lana_s_Kavkaza: Golden Canary grew really sweet. We dehydrated them into sun-dried tomatoes, and man, they were like pure sugar!…
Wow! I’ve been growing GC for my third or fourth season now, and it has always been completely bland for me 🤷♀️. Not even the slightest hint of acidity. I really respect this variety for its yield and how gorgeous it looks in jars. My family loves it pickled, but I don’t. It seems bland and watery to me even when canned. But man, look how well it performed down in Stavropol! The soil and climate down there must be absolutely perfect for it! 👍
I feel like Pink Flamingo (if I’m not messing up the name) would make a great pair for it. They are very similar in shape.
Yeah, shape-wise it’s a great match for flamingo… except flamingo is pink 🙂
I just ate a Golden Canary today (that I picked about 3 weeks ago). I can’t even believe it myself! Very good taste, I would actually call it sweet. Why is that? During the summer straight off the vine it was total cardboard 😝, but now it’s delicious 😋!
Golden Canary grew in my greenhouse this year, in a spot that wasn’t exactly getting the best light… But wow, it pushed out so many trusses 🙌. I only had one plant, pruned it to 3 stems, and it kept producing right up until the end of the season. I cut a few full trusses and hung them up inside the house – they hung there for a long time as a nice reminder of the summer 🙂. The fruits have tough skin, the flesh is quite tasty, and by the end of summer, they got really sweet. The fruits are very convenient for dehydrating and canning in a sweet marinade.
Natalya, now the Pink Flamingo seeds I got from you are going to go into the exact same jar as my Golden Canary (I don’t even remember who originally shared those seeds with me anymore 😳). I think they are going to make a gorgeous pair 😘! I heard they are very similar in taste too?
Quote from pas-len4ik: I think they are going to make a gorgeous pair 😘! I heard they are very similar in taste too?
Lena, everyone’s experience is different… Let’s not forget that the characteristics of a variety depend directly on our specific growing conditions! 🌸 🌸 🌸
After the way GC surprised me today, I’m going to plant these two varieties right next to each other in the absolute best spots in my garden, right where I can keep a close eye on them!
Prolific, beautiful variety, but to my taste – a bit bland.
Golden Canary was a heavy yielder in the greenhouse. Got to about 6.5 feet (2 m) tall, mid-season ripening. The fruits were juicy and meaty, with a pretty ordinary tomato taste.
One of the most gorgeous varieties, I absolutely love tomatoes with a little pointed beak 😘 😂. Huge trusses, lemon-yellow fruits weighing up to 2.5 oz (70 g). I grew it again this year paired up with its red equivalent, the Legend of Tarasenko (Legenda Tarasenko) variety.
So many beautiful photos from everyone in this thread. I’ll add mine too. The bush itself isn’t incredibly strong, but it pulls a massive load of fruit for a very long time (it grew under cover for us and kept fruiting right into autumn). 100% fruit set, the first truss formed at the very bottom and was literally resting on the soil. The fruits ripen gradually on the truss. The taste is gentle and mild, like the vast majority of yellow varieties. I didn’t see any Blossom End Rot (BER) at all.
Golden Canary is a tall, prolific variety with large trusses. The fruits have a very unique yellow shape with a long beak. I loved combining this variety in jars with the red Legend of Tarasenko tomatoes.
For my personal taste, it’s a bit too bland fresh.
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In post #16, Yaroslavna mentions cutting whole trusses off the plant before the first frost and hanging them indoors. This is an incredibly popular old-school Eastern European method for late-season tomato storage! Instead of picking individual green tomatoes and tossing them in a cardboard box (which often leads to rot), growers cut the entire main branch or truss and hang it upside down in a cool, dry room. The tomatoes slowly draw the last bit of energy out of the dying vine, resulting in much better flavor when they finally ripen off the plant weeks later.
