Quick Summary of Pink Siberian Tiger
- 🌍 Origin: A famous anthocyanin variety that has become an absolute superstar in the Russian tomato community (where it is known as “Rozovyi Sibirskiy Tigr”).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate, though some growers note it acts more like a semi-determinate, reaching about 1.5 – 2 meters (5 – 6.5 ft) depending on whether it’s grown outdoors or in a greenhouse. Note: Like many antho varieties, it can be prone to edema in the seedling stage, but usually recovers perfectly once planted out.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Stunning flattened-round to slightly elongated beefsteaks. The base color is dark pink/magenta, splashed with dark blue/black anthocyanin shoulders and stripes. Size is highly variable: while advertised up to 900g, most growers report a solid average of 150g – 300g (5 – 10.5 oz), with occasional fruits reaching 500g (1.1 lbs).
- ☀️ Growing Tips: Anthocyanin expression is directly tied to sunlight. Grown in the shade, the fruits will be mostly pink. Grown in direct sun, they turn almost black. However, growers warn that they can get sunscald if exposed to extreme heat waves (+40°C / 104°F) without any shade cloth.
- 👅 Flavor: The main reason it is so beloved! Growers rave about its rich, complex flavor profile—incredibly sweet, with notes of caramel, fruit acid, and a slightly spicy antho finish. Many consider it the best-tasting dark tomato available. It also boasts an excellent shelf life.
I liked the variety. It grew in a greenhouse, the height of the bush was about 1.5 meters (5 ft), and the fruit weight was up to 200-250g (7-8.8 oz). Productive.
In appearance, the fruits look like Amethyst Jewel, but there are differences: Amethyst has mostly even/round fruits, while the Tiger also has elongated ones. The coloration is almost identical, the stripes on the Tiger are barely visible. However, with such varieties, the color changes as it ripens. There are also differences inside the fruit. Taste-wise, the Tiger seemed tastier to me. Seeds were from Kraft.
Sandr said:
The stripes on the Tiger are barely visible…
It’s a pity the stripes aren’t very noticeable. Probably the website where I recently bought seeds picked the most beautiful Siberian Tiger to photograph 😉
In different climatic conditions, with different agricultural practices, and levels of ripeness… tomatoes turn out different in color and taste…
My Pink Siberian Tiger was from Germany; the fruits are meatier than Amethyst Jewel, and tastier. I only have this photo for now (Tiger is in the middle).
Left to right: Blue Beauty, Pink Siberian Tiger, Amethyst Jewel.
My Kraft seeds also don’t show stripes very well; the smaller fruits have more pronounced stripes. If I have time and they don’t overripen, I will photograph them.
And I also noticed with blue (antho) varieties: they react strongly to light/sun, so you can create all sorts of colorations using light, but of course, that requires time to constantly monitor them.
ElenaN said:
My Pink Siberian Tiger was from Germany… (Tiger is in the middle).
To my inexperienced eye, they all look like twins in terms of coloration.
Alisa, the varieties are indeed very similar, and from a photo, you can’t immediately tell which is which. But there are differences: Tiger is darker. Both varieties in Elena’s photo are on the verge of overripening, so that is their final coloration. Tiger is definitely tastier; I specifically gave it to 2 other people to try.
I looked at the photo of your Tiger fruit—it looks like an abnormal fruit. It’s either from a megabloom (махровый цветок), or the shape is deformed, the fruit has two blossom ends and looks battered. It seems it grew under non-standard conditions. And as I said, depending on the lighting, these varieties have different colorations. Even a thin twig blocking the light changes the pattern on the fruit. So I think your fruits will look more like the majority of the photos posted here.
Oh, I don’t mind Tigers that aren’t fully striped! They are still beauties!!!
Only the weight confuses me. Where I bought them, the weight was claimed to be up to 900g (2 lbs), but in reality, look how it turns out… What did they do to get such large fruits? Or did they specify the weight of a fruit from a megabloom?
But 200-250g (7-8.8 oz) is also a decent weight. Pruning probably plays a role too—if you leave 2-3 stems, the fruit weight could potentially be higher. But apparently, even though it’s classified as an indeterminate, in reality, it acts like a semi-determinate if it only grew to 1.5m for you. So if you don’t leave more stems, the yield will be smaller?
Alisa said:
To my inexperienced eye, they all look like twins in terms of coloration.
They do differ after all.
Blue Beauty vs Pink Siberian Tiger.
And conditions influence them a lot, of course. The last fruits of the season had a much more pronounced color.
The stripes are especially visible on the last fruit! Beauties! 😍
On my last two fruits of Blue Beauty, which hung until yesterday on a plant with almost no leaves, the stripes also became visible. The fruits are small and gnarly due to the outdoor weather, though.
It seems it’s all about the light, because there isn’t much heat during the day anymore, and nights are +4 to +8°C (39-46°F). If Siberian Tiger is kept in full light (but not scorching sun), the stripes should show up with more contrast.
My Siberian Tiger, seeds from Popenko. Growing 3 bushes. One is in the greenhouse, planted in early May in place of an Amethyst Jewel that snapped during tying. The greenhouse bush is 1.5 – 1.6m (5-5.2 ft) tall.
The trusses on all the Tigers had vegetative growth (leaves growing out of the flower cluster). The first truss was full, many fruits; the second was smaller; the third had only one fruit. Then there was a break—it refused to set fruit in the heat, but after the temperatures dropped, it set a few more. It ripened in mid-July.
The fruits look very much like Amethyst Jewel and Blue Beauty, but there are differences. I agree with Alexander: Tiger’s shape is different, it has both round and elongated fruits. The main difference is the taste. Tiger is the tastiest, and not just among this group of blue beauties. Well-balanced, with pronounced sweetness—that’s how Pink Siberian Tiger turned out for me.
The outdoor fruits had a darker color, and the taste (maybe it just seemed so) was even brighter.
I liked the Siberian Tiger variety very much. In the greenhouse, it was tall (2 meters / 6.5 ft), productive, mid-season. The fruits were medium-sized, oblate in shape, dark pink with anthocyanin stripes. Excellent taste, sweet, juicy-meaty, with a spicy aftertaste.
I love antho tomatoes, so I sowed it as soon as I received the seeds on February 28th. The first truss appeared after the 9th leaf, while still a seedling. The bush grew outdoors in the partial shade of other tomatoes. The first truss was practically without any blue or stripes.
The second truss was darker, but still no stripes.
I plan to plant two bushes this year: one from my own saved seeds, the second from the original seeds, and I will plant them in a sunny spot.
Siberian Tiger is one of my favorite blue varieties. It’s productive, beautiful 👍, and very tasty! 😋 The weight of the largest one was 500g (1.1 lbs), average weight 200-300g (7-10.5 oz)—this is from my own saved seeds. Last year (from Popenko’s seeds) it was smaller, up to 350g.
Well, Pink Siberian Tiger didn’t particularly impress me 🤫 😳.
And it seemed very similar to Amethyst Jewel, literally the exact same face)))
Is this tomato really that late? It’s not even preparing to turn red yet, even though the fruits have already grown. I don’t know when to expect it.
If you end up liking the taste, maybe try getting seeds from another source? Mine ripened outdoors among the very first, and not just compared to other anthos. Maybe you got seeds from a greenhouse or from a much warmer climate?
Alisa said:
Maybe you got seeds from a greenhouse or from a much warmer climate?
Yeah, sure. They remember where they grew and pass this information on to their descendants 😎 😛
No one canceled acclimatization (zoning) ))) When I get seeds of the exact same variety from different sources, I plant them side by side, and usually, the difference is obvious. Sometimes one starts ripening very early, and the other only gets going by the end of the season.
1. There is no such thing as “acclimatized” tomato seeds (in a single generation).
2. There is a biological concept called “norm of reaction” — the limits of variability of a trait.
3. Making conclusions based on 1 or 2 plants is pointless.
4. This conversation is not for the catalog thread.
It really upset me at the beginning of the season. It was dropping blossoms too aggressively. No other tomato did that. I thought I’d only get a few fruits per bush. But it did manage to set some eventually.
But when I tried it for the first time, I lost my speech. It is something extraordinary. It has sweetness, a slight acidity, richness of flavor, and an amazing aftertaste. A very bright and complex flavor. Just super! One of the tastiest tomatoes this season.
Planted Pink Siberian Tiger in 2018. For the greenhouse, I sowed it on March 5 (seeds arrived late). Final planting in the greenhouse on May 3. We ate the first fruit on July 9. One of the seedlings got the nickname “the pilot” because it managed to dive off the balcony table in a 1-liter pot when it was already 30cm (12″) tall. Luckily, it landed on its feet and didn’t break.
For the open ground, I sowed on March 20 without soaking the seeds (I read a recommendation on the forum that it’s better not to soak antho seeds). Planted in the ground on May 18. We ate the first one at the end of July.
Very beautiful, tasty, balanced with sweetness. Ripened quite early. The tomato is undoubtedly tastier and larger than Amethyst Jewel. It was highly productive for me both indoors and outdoors. The first truss is super productive; I had about 16+ fruits ripen on it. It doesn’t like overwatering, but it only cracks if you overwater it heavily after a long dry spell. The fruits from the lower truss were many, so they were smaller (under 200g), but definitely none smaller than 110-115g (4 oz).
I plan to plant 2 bushes in the greenhouse next year. The taste is identical indoors and outdoors (though usually our outdoor tomatoes taste better). The greenhouse just gives more trusses because we plant earlier.
I completely agree with Yulia about the taste. But my yield was small because it severely burned and baked in the sun. It grew by the south door—I wanted to give the anthos more sun, and Tiger, along with Great White Blues, literally cooked, even the top branches. I had to prune them. Next time, I will plant it in the middle of the bed.
Irina Fedorova said:
…severely burned and baked in the sun, it grew by the south door…
It can do that, yes. Plus, my entire greenhouse was “curtained” with Agrotex 30 (shade cloth), and even then, starting in July, the heat was over +40°C (104°F). Antho varieties roll their leaves into little boats more than anyone else in the heat. It handles partial shade well, although for beautiful anthocyanin and taste, it still needs sun. It’s a real balancing act.
Pink Siberian Tiger suffered from edema in the seedling stage, and was small and wimpy in the greenhouse at first. But then it unexpectedly grew, bloomed wildly, and immediately set a bunch of beautiful, dark, almost identical fruits. Now they all ripened very uniformly. Very beautiful and tasty. And at the very top, it set a few striped little tigers.
The taste of “Tiger” deserves a detailed and deep investigation. I won’t claim that it’s insanely good and unbelievable, but its bright aftertaste leaves no doubt — Caramel! And that is about as typical or ordinary as if your meat dumplings had a melon flavor. Or if lollipops grew on a tree. An amazing variety!
This year I planted 2 bushes of PST. For some reason, this year from my own seeds, the fruits were smaller, but even tastier than last year’s. Fully comparable to cherry tomatoes in sweetness. Very, very tasty this year, simply magnificent: dense, meaty, moderately juicy, super sweet, with the right fruity acidity and a little spice from the antho. The taste is very intense and rich. A tomato-fruit.
The flesh at full ripeness wasn’t pink, but dark raspberry/magenta. The sauce I made from it turned out a mind-blowingly beautiful color. PST turns out with an even richer taste “in the cool weather” for us, and richer color too. They keep quite well at room temperature and store for a long time. Even the ripe ones become tastier and sweeter if you let them sit at home for a couple of days (not in the fridge). Yield was perfectly fine, we ate our fill of PST this year.
Adding to my review: it stores perfectly when picked fully ripe! We picked the last tomatoes when we pulled the bushes at the very end of September. They just sat in a bucket in the vestibule at room temperature. I cut open the last remaining cocktail-sized tomato at the end of October, just out of curiosity to see what happened to the texture, taste, etc.
Mind-blowing deliciousness! A concentrate! Very sweet, with a fruity note, acidity, and an aftertaste, as written above, of caramel. Dense, meaty, and moderately juicy. It didn’t spoil, dry out, or shrivel one bit from sitting. I want to clarify: it was picked ripe, not green or breaker. Overall, PST gave us 0% waste this year — we ate everything down to the smallest fruit!
Growing PST for the first year, it seems to me that my fruits are a bit small too. Maybe they just haven’t fully sized up yet, but compared to other varieties, it clearly loses in size. But size isn’t the main thing; taste is more important!
I don’t know if I have the right variety, but I planted it as Pink Siberian Tiger? Planted for the first time in 2020. The anthocyanin is not very visible yet. (Posted a video)
I was already told that I have an off-type (crossed seeds). But I still decided to film cutting it open + a tasting. Maybe it will be useful to someone. Honestly, from the first fruit, which wasn’t very large and not very well-shaped, the taste disappointed me. However, I don’t judge tomatoes by a single fruit. So I picked the most beautiful fruit from my off-type plant and tried it, and I wasn’t wrong.
Tatka said:
Growing PST for the first year, it seems to me that my fruits are a bit small too.
It’s okay, its size “wanders” a bit, apparently. One of my absolute favorite varieties in general, and the fact that it doesn’t grow huge is actually a plus for me — it gets eaten whole with no leftovers, and the trusses on PST are quite abundant. It never gets sick, doesn’t throw tantrums, doesn’t crush neighboring plants, but isn’t a weakling either.
And most importantly, the taste of PST is perfectly identical whether outdoors or in the greenhouse. By the way, for lovers of acidity: PST is sweet, but it has more acid in it than Lucid Gem or P20+Beauty King. Only, it’s better to let it ripen until it’s dark raspberry, almost burgundy, then it’s especially tasty.
Pink Siberian Tiger.
I’ve had it for the third year. This year it didn’t get edema as a seedling, unlike others. For me, it is the sweetest, on par with Vater Rhein.
Well, this year it outdid itself and bloomed first among all my indeterminates! It even beat all my determinates, except Stupice and 42 Days. Its peers (Early Siberians, Steak Kantu) are still just in buds.
Sweet and early — what more could you wish for?