Quick Summary of Rimskaya Svecha (Roman Candle)
- 🌍 Origin: A strikingly beautiful yellow paste/icicle variety (originally sourced by Russian collectors from the US/Valery Popenko).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate, tall, and highly productive. The bush has a very distinct, frail/wispy structure right from the seedling stage. As one grower poetically described it: “A flexible, graceful stem that looks like a thin candle, and the trusses of tomatoes hang like dripping wax.” It easily exceeds 2 meters (6.5 ft) in a greenhouse and can easily handle being pruned to 2, 3, or even 4 stems.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Beautiful, neon-yellow elongated “bananas” or icicles with a distinct little beak at the end. They weigh around 100g (3.5 oz). The fruits are very dense, meaty, and hold up incredibly well after picking—they can sit on the counter for weeks without losing their appearance.
- 👅 Flavor & Culinary Use: While the flavor for fresh eating is rated as “so-so” or ordinary by some, it shines as an ultimate processing tomato. It is perfectly meaty, not watery, and holds its shape exceptionally well in canning jars. Its dense flesh also makes it perfect for thick sauces and cooking (like adding bulk to zucchini caviar/squash spread).
- ⏳ Maturity: Mid-late to late season. It produces continuously until the very end of the season in September.
Seeds from Popenko (USA). The bush is tall, indeterminate, skinny/wispy, and pushes out a lot of suckers—you barely have time to snap them off. There is an enormous amount of fruit set; if the weather had been good, the yield would have been super. As it was, the first two trusses barely set, but higher up there were a lot of fruits. They ripened a bit late and almost all at once.
I think they will ripen earlier usually, the potential is there. The variety is beautiful, the fruits are neon-yellow little bananas with a beak, very attractive in canning jars. Weight is around 100g (3.5 oz), dense, excellent keepers—I had a few fruits sit on the counter for a month because I needed to pass them on for tasting. I will definitely try planting it again.
Here they are already in the jars.
I liked the variety, it’s beautiful, meaty, I would say it’s a canning type, with a stunningly beautiful color that doesn’t turn orange. It was one of the first to start ripening. For me, it turned out to have a low yield, but that’s my own fault—I planted them way too densely because of my chronic variety-hoarding addiction. I want to repeat it this year. Variety from Popenko. Liked it in the jars both for taste and appearance.
A very vigorous bush – I pruned it to a single stem, but it’s worth trying 2-3 stems… Very beautiful fruits – lemon-colored, dense, meaty. They sat on the counter for two weeks without any loss in appearance… I will definitely repeat it..
A huge thank you to Marinochka-marinas11 for the seeds! 🌸
Repeated it this year, it easily “pulls” the load even when pruned to 3 or 4 stems in the greenhouse 👍
Seeds from Popenko, the taste is so-so, the whole harvest went straight into canning jars, grew in the greenhouse.
An excellent tomato. Not the earliest, but very, very productive. Exactly what you need for pickling/canning. Got the seeds from Vladimir Tumanov. I will be repeating it.
2019 season, seeds from Popenko. The variety is wonderful, abundant. I will definitely plant it next year. Beautiful, meaty yellow fruits.
The bush is special right from the seedling stage: it is immediately clear why the variety got this name. A flexible, graceful stem that looks like a thin candle, and the trusses of tomatoes hang down like dripping wax on a candle ))) A very beautiful plant, in my opinion.
In the greenhouse, it grew over 2 meters (6.5 ft) tall. It fruited very abundantly and continuously right until the finale in September. The taste is good, they are ideal for canning – they don’t fall apart, they are not watery, very meaty.
It went very well into zucchini caviar (squash spread) – it provided great bulk/mass without making it watery. Good for thick sauces.
