Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zones 3-4 Experience)
An early, tree-type determinate for growing outdoors in the dirt. Pumps out dense, bright red fruits. Fruit weight runs about 7-9 oz (200-250 g). It is a massive yielder even up here in our short season (my original seeds came from the Sumy region). It throws trusses of 6-8 perfectly round, uniform fruits with firm, fragrant flesh.
They hold up forever on the counter after picking. Great all-purpose tomato for canning and processing.
Natasha, your Stone Flower looks absolutely gorgeous. Definitely adding this one to my grow list for next year!!! 🙂 🙂
In my garden, this one acted way more like a mid-season variety. 🎩
Ordered my seeds from Redko. Absolute biggest disappointment of the summer 🙁
Description from my notes (based on Redko’s site and forum reviews): Tree-type, early, round, 7-9 oz (200-250g), heavy producer, red, super long shelf life. Grown outdoors.
Well, at first it completely disappointed me with fruit set. Just a couple of puny ones. Eventually it managed to push out a few decent clusters of medium-sized tomatoes. I tried the very first one that ripened on the plant and literally spit it out. I haven’t even tasted cardboard like this from a winter supermarket! Hard to even describe it: hard as a rock, mealy, bone-dry, and absolutely zero flavor. No tang, no sweetness, just a really nasty aftertaste.
I picked one and set it on the counter to save seeds (just in case). Cut it open a week later… and the seeds had already sprouted inside! And the flavor somehow got even worse. Didn’t even bother saving the seeds 🙁
Because the fruits are so ridiculously dense, they take forever to bulk up. For me it acted like a mid-late season. But I actually kind of like it for those rock-solid little bricks. Mine were definitely on the smaller side, maybe 4.5 oz (130 g) max, and the plant didn’t set a ton of clusters, so you really need to run several bushes to get a decent crop.
The flavor… yeah, totally falls short. Let’s just call it what it is: bland. But… it’s not a complete disaster. Since they store like rocks, being able to chop them into a salad in late fall when absolutely nothing else in the garden is alive is still a blessing.
Full Summary: Plant, Yield, Taste and Storage
- 🌿 Plant: A true tree-type determinate bush (stout, rugose-style foliage). Very sturdy. Days to maturity vary wildly by climate, ranging from early to mid-late. Best suited for outdoor growing.
- 📈 Yield: Mixed results. Some get massive yields, while others report poor fruit set requiring multiple plants to get a decent crop.
- 👅 Taste & Texture: Highly controversial. The fruits are incredibly hard and dense. While one grower found them fragrant, others brutally criticized the flavor as mealy, bone-dry, and completely bland – comparing them unfavorably to cheap winter supermarket cardboard.
- 🍅 Fruit Size: Round red fruits. Officially 7-9 oz (200-250 g), though some growers report smaller 4.5 oz (130 g) “bricks.”
- 📦 Storage: Excellent. The name “Stone Flower” perfectly describes the density of the fruit. They will sit on a counter for a very long time without rotting, making them useful for end-of-season storage when nothing else is available.
In heirloom tomato culture, a “spitter” is exactly what it sounds like – a tomato so bland, mealy, or nasty that you spit out the first bite. Kamenny Tsvetok literally translates to “Stone Flower”, which explains a lot about its genetics. In Russia, there is a whole category of “storage” or “winter” tomatoes bred to be as hard as rocks. You pick them green before the frost, throw them in a box in the basement, and they slowly turn red by December. The trade-off for that insanely long shelf life is usually a dry, mealy texture and a complete lack of sweetness.
