🍅 Quick take: A highly contested name covering several different strains. The heirloom swap version produces sweet, deep pink oblate tomatoes on a regular leaf plant, while commercial seed packets often produce a completely different compact, carrot-leaf plant with mixed-to-negative flavor reviews. Full summary ↓
Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zones 3-6)
Grew Marmalade from our girl Galya (Esme) in the greenhouse. It got up to 5 feet (1.5 m) tall. Sprawling bush, vigorous foliage, deep pink-red fruits, oblate, weighing up to 3.5-7 oz (100-200 g). Very tasty.
Sveta, how was the yield on it?
Zulfiya wrote:
Sveta, how was the yield on it?
I’d give it a 4 out of 5. The heat caused some blossom drop.
Lana_s_Kavkaza wrote:
…deep pink-red fruits, oblate, weighing up to 3.5-7 oz (100-200 g). Very tasty.
Is the taste sweet?
Would it be good for canning/pickling?
Thanks 🌺
It’s tasty, slightly sweet. Didn’t pickle them, we just ate them fresh in salads.
Found another photo of the bush, but we had already eaten the red ones, or maybe they just hadn’t ripened yet 🤷♀️ 🎩
Thanks for the photos and info! I’ll plant a couple this year and see how it goes… people hyped this variety up for me SO much, I basically have to plant it now 🙂
My Marmalade is from the “Ural Gardener” brand. It’s short, early, and has carrot leaves! 😳
Here is what it looks like 🤷♀️. I already picked the first 7 red tomatoes off of it, I have a photo of the fruit in my album.
My seeds were also from “Ural Gardener.” I highly suspect this variety used to be called “Carrot” (Morkovnyi) because of the foliage, and they just renamed it.
Meri wrote:
I highly suspect this variety used to be called “Carrot” (Morkovnyi) because of the foliage…
Nope, it’s not the same. I’m actually growing the old Carrot variety right now too. Carrot is taller, and the tomatoes are smaller and round. Marmalade is very oblate, significantly larger, and tastes totally different.
I also had Marmalade from Ural Gardener with the carrot leaves. Found absolutely zero promised “marmalade” sweetness in them. They just grew into small, sour little tomatoes.
I didn’t like this variety either. It got hit by late blight almost immediately, and they weren’t tasty at all.
My Marmalade sprouted with potato leaves! What is the real one actually supposed to look like?
Full Summary: Marmalade (Marmeladnyi)
- 🌿 Plant & Foliage: There is massive genetic variation depending on the seed source (*see Editor’s Note*). The heirloom swap version is a sprawling indeterminate with regular leaves, reaching 5 feet (1.5 m). The commercial version from “Ural Gardener” is a compact determinate with highly distinct carrot-like foliage. Some growers even reported potato leaf variations.
- 🍅 Fruit & Shape: Most strains produce deep pink to crimson-red oblate (flattened globe) tomatoes. Fruits generally weigh in the medium range, around 3.5-7 oz (100-200 g), though the commercial carrot-leaf strain can produce smaller fruits.
- 📈 Yield & Health: The heirloom strain is productive but prone to blossom drop in high heat. The commercial carrot-leaf strain is early but heavily criticized for being a disease magnet, with multiple reports of it being wiped out quickly by late blight.
- 👅 Taste: Reviews are polarized by strain. The heirloom version is praised as tasty and sweet, excellent for fresh salads. The commercial carrot-leaf version received overwhelmingly negative reviews, described as sour, bland, and lacking any of the “marmalade” sweetness its name promises.
🍅 Have you grown Marmalade? Drop a comment below! Which leaf type did your plant have, and did it actually taste sweet for you?
👨🌾 Editor’s Note: Name Collisions in Russian Seeds
“Marmeladnyi” simply translates to “Marmalade.” Because it is a generic descriptive word rather than a trademarked heirloom name, several completely unrelated genetics are sold under it. The commercial packet sold by “Ural Gardener” (Ural’skiy Dachnik) is a dwarf carrot-leaf variety, while private seed savers trade a much older, regular-leaf indeterminate heirloom under the exact same name. This leads to wildly different results in both plant habit and flavor.
“Marmeladnyi” simply translates to “Marmalade.” Because it is a generic descriptive word rather than a trademarked heirloom name, several completely unrelated genetics are sold under it. The commercial packet sold by “Ural Gardener” (Ural’skiy Dachnik) is a dwarf carrot-leaf variety, while private seed savers trade a much older, regular-leaf indeterminate heirloom under the exact same name. This leads to wildly different results in both plant habit and flavor.
