Scarlet Candles (Alye Svechi) Tomato Reviews

Alye Svechi (Scarlet Candles) is an indeterminate. The yield is quite good. They really do look like candles—long, narrow little fruits. Mid-season maturity. However, for some reason, when mine started ripening, they would shrivel up a bit from the blossom end. And it wasn’t just them…

Verochka, how do they hold up in canning jars?

I haven’t tried canning them yet. 😉

I really liked their taste. The growth is absolutely unlimited; I had to lower the vines in the greenhouse. Also, mine had rather long internodes, possibly due to a lack of light.

I grew it last year. Solid 4 out of 5 rating. I deduct one point because there was poor demand for them at the market. It’s a variety for a specific acquired taste.

I planted it outdoors in open ground. I was late with pruning the suckers, so it grew into a jungle. Very heavy yielder, I kept harvesting right up until late autumn. Most of them ended up in canning jars. They are tasty, meaty, and firm.

I will plant them again this year, and they will go outdoors again.

I grew it in 2012 too. I really liked it!! Especially my little sister, she ordered me to plant it again this year. The fruit set was excellent, even during our heatwaves. It’s great not just for canning, but for salads too.

I agree with everyone. I grew it for several years and only swapped it out to try some new varieties. When canned in jars, even if the skin splits, they don’t turn into mush because of their dense flesh.

I planted this variety in the greenhouse. I agree that the fruit set was great. But its unlimited growth and massive, powerful bush are just something else. You should have seen how a fragile woman was trying to single-handedly dig up those monster bushes and drag them out of the greenhouse in the fall. I didn’t save seeds and won’t be planting it again.

Well, what is “dismemberment with pruning shears” for? 😛 I just chop bushes like that into pieces 😘

For some reason, mine turned out to be pink, but otherwise everything was the same. I really liked it and will repeat it. Even all my round varieties suffered from Blossom End Rot (BER), but this one did not.

Nadia said:

For some reason, mine turned out to be pink…

Yes, Nadyusha, it is indeed pink. I have never had icicle-shaped tomatoes of this exact color before. 👍

I plant Scarlet Candles almost every year. They grow into very tasty, sweet, and meaty icicles. According to my observations, this variety is quite resistant to that nasty greenhouse plague—Leaf Mold (Cladosporium). The bushes grow very tall (up to 2 meters / 6.5 ft) and are highly productive.

The variety is very well suited for canning.

tomatinka said:

Yes, Nadyusha, it is indeed pink. I have never had icicle-shaped tomatoes of this exact color before. 👍

This year I had a lot of new varieties, and somehow we didn’t prioritize this one. It was sown with the last batch in early March, didn’t get a spot under the shelter, so we just planted it in a crowded bed among 18 other varieties outdoors. I pruned the suckers at the very beginning, put up a stake, and then did absolutely nothing to it (picking off leaves is just not our thing).

Then it came time to taste it. I was unsure if the tomatoes were fully ripe because there was still some green at the tip and green specks. When sliced, there was green at the bottom too. But it turned out that this is exactly what’s needed to be amazed by its completely unusual and delicious flavor! That’s how this variety behaved in our conditions. Out of 18 bushes (both short and tall) planted there, only 4 varieties survived the Late Blight (Phytophthora) that hit on August 29th, and Scarlet Candles was one of them! Right now, we have covered them with a perforated plastic film, letting the last tomatoes ripen and bring us joy. Against the red background of other tomatoes, the unique color of this variety stands out clearly. Seeds were from Tomatinka.

I grew it for 2 years. Soooo incredibly productive, but in my region (near Yekaterinburg) it is mid-late season and grew nearly 3 meters (10 ft) tall… For me, the taste was a bit bland (though not terribly) and on the drier side. I personally prefer sweet, juicy, and grainy-textured tomatoes. BUT!!! They store for a very long time. Though their bottoms do shrivel up (just like in Tomatinka’s very first photo).

I planted “Scarlet Candles” for two years in a row. For our family, this is strictly a canning tomato. What I really loved is that this tomato did not suffer from Blossom End Rot (BER) at all. Right next to it, varieties like “Auria” and “Chocolate Bunny” were choking on BER despite being treated with calcium nitrate and calcium chloride, but “Scarlet Candles” didn’t care. Not a single tomato got sick! And it set fruit without skipping a single blossom, even in our extreme Kuban heat.

This is how we protected the Scarlet Candles bush from Late Blight. They sell a plastic film sleeve here in 5-meter rolls (you just cut off whatever length you need for the bush), and the film has holes in it for ventilation. With the bush being this tall, we thought we’d have to roll the plastic up or down to pick the tomatoes. But with this variety, it turned out to be easy—just shake the support stake, and the ripe ones drop to the ground. They survive the fall because their density is very good. All the tomatoes eventually ripened.