Honey Drop (Medovaya Kaplya) Tomato Review and Photos

Honey Drop (photo of the plant, cluster, fruit weight, sliced fruit)

I’ve liked Honey Drop for a long time. Didn’t manage to plant it this year, will try next year. Excellent variety! 🌹

Variety Name — HONEY DROP

Manufacturer — Russian Ogorod (RO)

Taste — Very pronounced sweet-sweet (ideal for people with high acidity). Personally, I miss that traditional tomato tang in the flavor.

Plant Type and Height — Indeterminate vine, over 6.5 ft (2 m)

Fruit Weight, Color, and Shape — 0.5-0.9 oz (15-25g), bright yellow, smooth pear shape

Pros — Low maintenance, 8-24 fruits per cluster, every single blossom sets fruit, can be pruned to multiple leaders, beautiful in every way.

Cons — None

Days to Maturity — Mid-early (111-115 days). First tomato ripened July 22.

Leaf Type — Potato Leaf

Inflorescence Type — Simple and Intermediate (semi-complex)

Locules — Three-chambered

Seed Count — Average

Usage — Fresh eating, perfect for picnics

Yield per Plant — from 4.4 lbs (2 kg) per plant (if pruned to 2 leaders or more)

Crack Resistance — Does not crack

Grew one plant outdoors. It behaved well, didn’t bush out too wildly, although I barely pinched any suckers (just a little at the bottom). You have to give it a tall, sturdy stake right from the start—the plant is massive 🙂 By late July it was just starting to ripen, and I had to pick the fruit green because of a late blight threat. After ripening on the counter, the taste was very good, quite sweet 😋 The Drop kept perfectly until late September without losing firmness or flavor—that’s almost 2 months! 👍

Planted it this year. Loved them. This summer, everyone’s tomatoes suddenly turned black both in the greenhouse and outdoors.

Honey Drop bounced back later, put out new leaves and fruit, and I harvested the little tomatoes several times over.

In September I picked the last green ones, and I still have them sitting around right now. They ripened slowly, and we’re just eating them now.

The flavor is wonderfully sweet. The most delicious little tomatoes)

Svetik, look how much space you gave your Honey Drop… Do all your outdoor tomatoes grow with that much room?

Quote from Nelli:
Svetik, look how much space you gave your Honey Drop… Do all your outdoor tomatoes grow with that much room?

Nellichka, the photo is from late July; by that time I had already picked almost all the outdoor tomatoes green and yanked the plants. Only 5-6 plants held on until the bitter end, including Honey Drop. That’s why it’s so wide open around it 🤫

But generally, determinates were growing next to the Drop, and it didn’t bother anyone 🙂

Honey Drop is just a super little tomato for kids. My daughter wolfs them down “like sunflower seeds.” I’ll definitely sow it again this year.

I grow Honey Drop every year. A very delicious and productive little tomato. I also can them in small jars (if there are any left). The plant is massive, tons of suckers. Indeterminate. I prune to 2-3 leaders.

The experienced forum folks are absolutely right: weather and growing conditions heavily impact tomato flavor.

I planted Honey Drop for the first time. During summer tasting, it seemed bland. But the “little drops” harvested in September developed an unusual, sweet-sweet, incredibly rich flavor. A literal flavor explosion! 🙌 The long, pleasant aftertaste felt like a party in your mouth for 15-20 minutes. The size is optimal for tomato candy: exactly one bite. 😋 They hold up quite well in storage, too.

Can you save seeds from Honey Drop? Mine says Honey Drop F1 from Russian Ogorod, “Delicious” series. But I’ve seen photos on the internet of the same Honey Drop without the F1 in the name.

It is definitely not a hybrid. 👍

My Honey Drop is also listed as a hybrid, from the exact same company as Lena’s, but I saved seeds last year anyway. Right now, I’m growing 3 plants from the original packet and 3 plants from my saved seeds side-by-side to compare. The tomatoes are sweet, hold up a long time in storage, and the leaves were still healthy in the fall, even though the Bull’s Heart right next to it was already showing spotted foliage.

Quote from tomatinka:
It is definitely not a hybrid. 👍

Are “Honey Drop” and “Golden Drop” the same thing? Is it really a hybrid? 😕 It seems like it’s always been an open-pollinated variety. 😳

Oh man! I really wanted to grow Honey Drop this year, and I’m looking at the photos—they have potato leaves, but all 4 of my plants have regular leaves. Must be a seed mix-up, what a bummer. I’ll just wait and see what grows out…

Olya, which seed company was it?

The “proper” Honey Drop is from Russian Ogorod, and it has potato leaves. It’s an OP variety, even though RO has recently started calling it a hybrid.

Yeah, from RO, the “Delicious” series. They were debating on another site whether it’s a variety or a hybrid. My packet says variety and F1 isn’t listed anywhere. But it sucks that out of 4 seedlings, all 4 are crossed seeds (for example, with Pink Brandywine out of 6 plants, only 2 were crossed with regular leaves, and 4 were normal with potato leaves).

In my old grow log, we figured out that this is just RO playing games.. they used to release it as an OP variety, and now as a hybrid. Plant it without fear – it is an open-pollinated heirloom!

Natasha, Olya’s whole issue, as I understand it, is that her Honey Drop leaves aren’t potato-leaf, they are regular – RO has completely lost the plot!

Quote from Esme:
Natasha, Olya’s whole issue, as I understand it, is that her Honey Drop leaves aren’t potato-leaf, they are regular – RO has completely lost the plot!

Galya, and it’s not just with tomatoes, what a mess they make with flowers, pure crossed seeds/mix-ups. 😠 Honestly, they’ve had a bad reputation trailing them for a while now. 😠 And Aelita fools around with petunias so much, there are no words. 😠 Sorry for going off-topic.

And how about this! 😲 Honey Drop from RO is sometimes a hybrid 😂

Quote from Esme:
Natasha, Olya’s whole issue, as I understand it, is that her Honey Drop leaves aren’t potato-leaf, they are regular – RO has completely lost the plot!

Yes-yes, that’s exactly the problem. I was so happy to find Honey Drop for sale, and now I look—the leaves are like Cherry Mio F1, and Red Cherry. I planted them all next to each other, so I’m comparing them.
Oh, hey folks! I’m going to have to beg you all for seeds of the real Honey Drop this winter, I want it so badly! 😳

Quote from tomatinka:
It is definitely not a hybrid. 👍

I guess I’ll be saving seeds this year, if they ripen with this weather.

This is my Honey Drop from Russian Ogorod. Potato leaf. It puts out a lot of suckers. Even though it says it doesn’t require pruning suckers, I snap them off anyway.

Natasha, it matches perfectly (if the fruits turn out light yellow, of course). It has lots and lots of suckers.

Quote from Natusik:
This is my Honey Drop from Russian Ogorod. Potato leaf. It puts out a lot of suckers. Even though it says it doesn’t require pruning suckers, I snap them off anyway.

My drop is exactly the same! Also from RO. We got lucky, they packed the right seeds in our packets 😉.

I didn’t really appreciate this highly praised variety. The taste is good, of course, but the yield is pretty average for a cherry…

It was my most disease-prone variety; the leaves were turning yellow all season. It threw suckers endlessly! You could prune them twice a day…

I had 6 plants, they all behaved identically.

Overall, I didn’t get the hype, although it is tasty and pretty, sure.

Not a productive variety.

My Honey Drop is productive, very sweet, we devour it with pleasure, it’s still fruiting and has no plans of “dying” yet. I’ll definitely plant it next year, I saved my own seeds.

Honey Drop, productive. I canned lots of jars with it, sweet…

Still ripening and even setting fruit in the greenhouse…

Repeated it this year. And I didn’t like it again. Yes, it’s very sweet, the tastiest of the cherries, BUT for me it isn’t productive and it’s hard to manage.

I noticed that if you don’t touch Honey Drop, i.e., let it run wild, it will pump out an insane amount of fruit despite the rampant sucker growth. But if you keep pinching it back, it stops producing… 😲

Quote from Nelli:
I noticed that if you don’t touch Honey Drop, i.e., let it run wild, it will pump out an insane amount of fruit despite the rampant sucker growth. But if you keep pinching it back, it stops producing… 😲

That is exactly right! I was pruning suckers all summer and couldn’t get it to fruit, we just went on vacation, came back, and there’s not a plant, but a whole forest, completely covered in little tomatoes! 😲 Mine turned out extremely delicious! 👍

Quote from Esme:
Olya, which seed company was it? “Proper” Honey Drop is from Russian Ogorod, with potato leaves. It’s a variety, although RO lately started calling it a hybrid.

Here is the packaging. Checked this year, 3 original plants and 3 from saved seeds, there’s no difference. Save seeds in peace, not a hybrid. Photo from early September taken by my granddaughter. Fruiting is stretched out. For taste I give it 4.5 points myself, it only has sweetness, no acidity.

I’ve planted it for a long time, like the variety, the little fruits are beautiful, tasty, good in small jars—tasty and pretty). Outdoors the height is small in the Moscow region, and yield is too, but I’ve been planting my own saved seeds for a long time.

Basically it’s a decent variety, but it seems to me there’s more “foliage” than tomatoes. 😉 I found a more valuable replacement, so I stopped growing it.

Quote from vikysia:
Basically it’s a decent variety, but it seems to me there’s more “foliage” than tomatoes. 😉 I found a more valuable replacement, so I stopped growing it.

And what variety did you replace it with, Vikusya?

Quote from vikysia:
Basically it’s a decent variety, but it seems to me there’s more “foliage” than tomatoes. 😉 I found a more valuable replacement, so I stopped growing it.

And what’s the replacement???

Quote from elena1984:
And what’s the replacement???

Summer Sun (hybrid), V 328 F1 Mini San Marzano type (hybrid) – both are sweeter and more productive than Honey Drop. And Morocco cherry from Angelina proved to be a super variety, slightly less sweet in my zone than Honey Drop since we basically had no summer, but it was much more productive. The clusters were a sight to behold, it set every cluster consecutively and heavily, and it stores and ripens off the vine beautifully… So I replaced it with those and haven’t regretted it one bit. I also liked Morocco’s structure – it’s neat, not obnoxious throwing branches everywhere… 😂

I grew it in the greenhouse for two years. Hard to manage, pushes forward like a tank in all directions, invading foreign territory. I had to prune suckers at the expense of the yield. Clearly it’s not written “do not prune suckers” for nothing. Flavor-wise – I’ve never tasted anything sweeter. Mind-blowingly delicious canned; if there’s any actually left to can, people literally fight over eating them. I tried it outdoors under temporary cover too. I pinched very few suckers. It gave lots of fruit, slightly smaller in size. Then I didn’t plant it for 5 years, tried others including hybrids. Never found anything better tasting. Will repeat in 2015 on a trellis outdoors.

Hello! I read what you all wrote and got a bit upset. Apparently, I bought the wrong thing. I really wanted this Honey Drop, but it wasn’t in any stores. The Russian Ogorod website said “maybe after the 20th,” but on one trip to the store they said they had it, so I bought it. But not from Russian Ogorod, it’s from Gavrish.. So I assume the highly-praised tomato isn’t what’s going to grow? Will anything grow at all.. If anyone planted from Gavrish, please respond. The thing that caught my eye is the description difference between the two brands: Honey Drop from RO is tall, but from Gavrish it’s short.

I grow Honey Drop outdoors, tie it to a trellis, train it to 2-3 leaders, it grows up to 5.5 ft (170 cm). It takes up too much room in the greenhouse. Fruits for a long time, doesn’t get sick. Very sweet and tasty little tomatoes. I only manage to can a couple of jars, the rest gets eaten.

I’ve been growing HD for several years now. I only snap off the bottom suckers. Lots of fruit. The plants don’t get sick. Fruits for a very long time. It’s the last one I pull out of the greenhouse. The skin isn’t tough, but it doesn’t crack during canning. I’m very happy with this variety!

Girls!

Sowed Honey Drop from Russian Ogorod this year.

Sprouted well.

But here’s what’s strange (or maybe it’s normal) after the cotyledons, the true leaves appeared, and they look more like pepper leaves than tomato leaves. 🤷‍♀️

Is this normal? 😲

Quote from Tatiiyasha:
But here’s what’s strange (or maybe it’s normal) after the cotyledons, the true leaves appeared, and they look more like pepper leaves than tomato leaves. 🤷‍♀️ Is this normal? 😲

Honey Drop has a potato leaf type, so don’t be scared. Everything is normal!

Quote from Tatiiyasha:
But here’s what’s strange (or maybe it’s normal) after the cotyledons, the true leaves appeared, and they look more like pepper leaves than tomato leaves. 🤷‍♀️ Is this normal? 😲

Apparently for Russian Ogorod it’s a YES! I sowed them too – got crossed seeds, they grew into small, round, yellow tomatoes on a short bush with regular leaves!
Ah, I misunderstood you…

Right, the drop has potato leaves…

I’ve been growing Honey Drop for three years, actually… it grows itself—as a volunteer. Always outdoors. The seeds winter beautifully in our frosts, sprout on their own, grow on their own. A wonderful little tomato! The flavor is phenomenal! The bush is aggressive with suckers, needs a lot of room horizontally. But last season, after a hurricane, all the volunteers blew over and just kept growing like that prostrate on the ground))) Set fruit wonderfully and went into the snow again loaded with tomatoes and flowers on the vine.

Girls, thanks, you calmed me down 🌹

The seeds sprouted so well, and I already promised seedlings to everyone. We will try the Drop! 😉

I want to make pickled little tomatoes out of it–for table decoration 😋

Quote from Tatiiyasha:
Girls, thanks, you calmed me down 🌹 I want to make pickled little tomatoes out of it–for table decoration 😋

The tomato is very tasty both fresh and in jars.

Quote from Naska:
they said they had it, so I bought it. But not from Russian Ogorod, it’s from Gavrish.. So I assume the highly-praised tomato isn’t what’s going to grow? Will anything grow at all.. If anyone planted from Gavrish, please respond. The thing that caught my eye is the description difference between the two brands: Honey Drop from RO is tall, but from Gavrish it’s short.

Joining the question. I got 5 plants of Honey Drop from Gavrish. The leaf is NOT potato. Has anyone grown it? How does it behave?

I’m not thrilled with this variety, planted it several years in a row. Potato leaf. The shape of the fruit is interesting, sure. But the yield is average, the variety is prone to disease, and I don’t particularly like the flavor – kind of acidic. Little kids are drawn to the cherry tomatoes, though. When canned, Honey Drop cracks. This year it was the first to get sick, both in the greenhouse and outdoors. I think Honey Drop tastes better canned than in a salad.

I don’t like it canned at all, which is why I stopped growing it.

Why so few? Are the clusters really that small, just three berries? 😲

Honey Drop is often praised as the absolute sweetest…

I didn’t like the drop either. The yield didn’t impress me. And there’s just no flavor. 🤷‍♀️

Canned a couple of jars; maybe I’ll like it in the winter 😉

Wow, for me there was no sweeter tomato this year. A true honey drop… The kid won’t leave the bush alone. Productive 🙋‍♀️ It was one of the last to get late blight; I cut all the leaves off, and it’s still setting and ripening off the vine… I have everything outdoors, and in pretty extreme conditions, too…

Grew Honey Drop in the greenhouse – 1 plant to two leaders, and outdoors – 2 plants next to each other doing whatever they wanted, but under an awning. Seeds from Svetikk, huge thanks to her! 😘 They were the sweetest cherries along with Chocolate Cherry from Yaroslavna. 😋 Outdoors (the tunnel was just for them), the yield was off the charts. 🙋‍♀️ Sveta wrote that the more leaders, the higher the yield. It’s totally true. They are still sitting in a box, not spoiling, the flavor hasn’t changed. 🙌 And we’ve already tried them canned in sweet brine—delicious. 😋 The plan for next year is planting outdoors in a dedicated tunnel.

I grew HD from Gavrish this year. In the open ground the yield was excellent, but quite late; in the greenhouse it was worse. Lots of little tomatoes got buried under the snow in the garden – I just didn’t have the energy to pick them anymore. But taste-wise, I wasn’t impressed – turned out bland. I’m looking, and the shape is slightly different from everyone else’s too 🤷‍♀️ I took pictures of the fruit from the freezer, because I don’t have any fall photos 😳

Quote from Arya40:
I grew HD from Gavrish this year. In the open ground the yield was excellent, but quite late…

And what size was the bush? Tall? Potato leaf? I bought it because Gavrish claimed it was a short plant, sowed it recently, and my seedlings have regular leaves.

Irina, I can’t say about the leaf, I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was regular, not potato leaf. But the height was definitely taller than the stated 1.5-3 ft (50-100cm) – somewhere around 5.2-6 ft (1.6m – 1.8m).

Quote from Arya40:
Irina, I can’t say about the leaf, I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was regular, not potato leaf. But the height was definitely taller than the stated 1.5-3 ft (50-100cm) – somewhere around 5.2-6 ft (1.6m – 1.8m).

Wow! Thanks! Now I’m going to have to do some heavy thinking about where to put these tall things, what to tie them up to))

I’ve been planting Honey Drop in the dirt for many years. Its leaves look more like pepper leaves, the seedling is scrawny at first, but then…, an extreme amount of suckers, I don’t remove all of them, takes up a lot of space, yield is average, you could say very average, but the taste is excellent. I haven’t found a replacement for it yet. Great in jars – pretty and tasty, doesn’t crack, highly resistant to late blight, one of my absolute favorites 😋

This is my Honey Drop. The seeds came from my mom, I can’t tell you where she got them from. The leaf is regular, typical tomato leaf. A plant of amazing survivability and fruitfulness. You could call it an unkillable tomato. The bush is enormous, it pumps out sucker after sucker, flowers, sets, and ripens right up until the frost. Unlimited growth. Good shelf life. A delicious sweet little tomato, our favorite.

Quote from Pomidornaya Zemlya:
This is my Honey Drop. The seeds came from my mom… The leaf is regular, typical tomato leaf…

Tell me, do you need to prune suckers on it or not?

Quote from Lyudmila D.:
Tell me, do you need to prune suckers on it or not?

Absolutely, its suckers grow at the speed of the wind.

Please tell me, I bought seeds for “Honey Drop F-1” from RO, does this mean I can’t save seeds from them? Or can I?

Quote from nina118:
Please tell me, I bought seeds for “Honey Drop F-1” from RO, does this mean I can’t save seeds from them? Or can I?

Mine is from RO, but it’s an OP variety. And I found a photo online where the same packet has an F 🤷‍♀️ I didn’t get it!

Quote from Lyudmila D.:
Mine is from RO, but it’s an OP variety. And I found a photo online where the same packet has an F 🤷‍♀️ I didn’t get it!

They wrote about this exact thing on the 1st and 2nd pages of this thread.

Quote from nina118:
Please tell me, I bought seeds for “Honey Drop F-1” from RO, does this mean I can’t save seeds from them? Or can I?

You can!

A big thanks to everyone for the answers about HD F-1, I read through everything and understood that I can safely save seeds. 👏👍

Quote from Drosera:
They wrote about this exact thing on the 1st and 2nd pages of this thread.

Thank you, I jumped into the conversation without reading the thread from the beginning.

In ’16 it grew by the bathhouse, on the south side. Productive, cute, tons of suckers, I removed a few, tasty. Canned in the same jar with Black De Barao, Elisey, Red Date—it ended up being the least tasty of them. The most delicious for me turned out to be De Barao!

The drop isn’t suited for canning, it bursts and isn’t tasty.

Quote from irunchik:
The drop isn’t suited for canning, it bursts and isn’t tasty.

I canned HD in 1-pint (0.5L) jars. It’s such a treat, my grannies literally fought over dividing up the last jar! 👍😂 And very pretty too! 🌹

Very tasty both fresh and canned. But mine isn’t a hybrid. Seeds are from Russian Ogorod from the “Delicious” series.

Quote from Tatyana Kemerovo:
I canned HD in 1-pint (0.5L) jars. It’s such a treat, my grannies literally fought over dividing up the last jar! 👍😂 And very pretty too! 🌹

Maybe you have a good recipe? Because for some people it’s tasty, for others not. Drop the recipe for the whole thread! 😉📝

Grew it in the greenhouse, it took up a lot of space, yield was very average, and for a cherry—practically none. Not much sweetness in the flavor, more like a regular tomato taste. Didn’t like it, won’t repeat.

Honey Drop has permanent residency in my garden both in the greenhouse and outdoors. I agree that the plant is very wide and aggressive, in the greenhouse I prune suckers almost every day (but only at the bottom), otherwise you can’t walk past it. Outdoors I don’t prune at all and even tie it up only while it’s small – then it pushes out suckers, flops over, and becomes a huge bush over 3.3 ft (1m) in diameter and 2 ft (0.6m) tall (in the greenhouse it grows to the roof). Very productive – we eat from 2 plants all summer (the kids adore it, my husband eats them by the handful while watering) and can them for winter in small jars. It’s the tastiest canned. This year in September I tried pulling up an outdoor plant and hanging it upside down in the greenhouse – almost all the little tomatoes dried perfectly on the vine. It never got sick with anything.

One of my absolute favorite varieties. Delicious, quite productive. Not bad for canning, but it rarely comes to that – as a rule, everything gets eaten.

Growing HD for the third season—first year outdoors, pruned suckers, average yield; second year in the greenhouse, pruned suckers, yield worse than outdoors and, of course, absolutely incapable of having neighbors, it tries to overshadow everyone, grew right under the roof however it wanted. This season I grew two plants outdoors, didn’t prune suckers at all, the yield is off the charts, remnants are still hanging on the bush ripening, I snapped off suckers at the top so it would have time to ripen, for some reason it turned out late, so it’s pushing new suckers again and blooming, thank goodness the weather allows it. Conclusion—if you grow it, do it separately from the rest (both my plants collapsed, broke the hoops and the determinates growing around them) and don’t prune suckers. Sturdy support is mandatory, though I can barely imagine what can hold it up. One bush grew on a metal mesh set up as a triangle—couldn’t get under it, inconvenient. Ate our fill, overate, excellent taste. Haven’t tried canning, but possibly will.

My Golden Rain is practically the same. Twins???

My Golden Rain looks absolutely nothing like Honey Drop in color, shape, or flavor, completely different tomatoes. Seeds from Svetikk.

Quote from Shevyachok:
My Golden Rain is practically the same. Twins???

Lyud, your Golden Rain is probably the one from Poisk.

On the forum, the Golden Rain from Zhenya in Prokhladny got popular, little icicles in huge clusters.

Sveta, yes! That’s it exactly.

I planted from two companies this year and the bushes were completely different. Some from Russian Ogorod and others from Gavrish. From Russian Ogorod they were tall with potato leaf and delicious and sweet. And from Gavrish short with regular leaf and not as sweet. Made a conclusion for myself that I will plant from Russian Ogorod. Especially since I read that you can save the seeds. Was very happy about that. Thanks for sharing the news 👏

Repeated this delicious cherry 😋, grew outdoors, indeterminate, didn’t prune suckers, potato leaf. Only yanked the bush in mid-September. This year the fruits turned out larger than before.

And what does Aelita have? It grows with multiflora-type clusters.