Quick Summary of Striped Pepper (Pertsevidnyy Polosatyy)
- 🌍 Origin: A classic Russian striped paste variety, though its origins are muddy. The name translates exactly to “Striped Pepper-shaped”. Warning: This variety suffers from a massive identity crisis on the commercial seed market. Different seed companies (SeDek, Gavrish, Nash Sad) sell completely different tomatoes under this name!
- 🌿 Plant Habit: The “true” original version is a determinate (short) bush, maxing out at around 70cm (2.3 ft), often displaying sturdy, tree-type (rugose) characteristics. However, many commercial packets sell an indeterminate (tall) vine that reaches 1.5–2m (5–6.5 ft).
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Elongated, pepper-shaped or sausage-shaped paste tomatoes. The color is red with bright yellow/orange zig-zag stripes. They are extremely firm with very thick walls and little juice.
- 👅 Flavor & Texture: Highly debated! Lovers of juicy, sweet tomatoes often rate it as “tasteless” or “tough as wood.” However, canning enthusiasts love it because the extreme firmness means it holds its shape perfectly in jars without turning into mush.
- ⚠️ Growing Challenges: Some indeterminate versions of this variety are highly susceptible to Blossom End Rot (BER) during heatwaves.
Pertsevidnyy Polosatyy (Striped Pepper)
We ordered this from Ozyory about 15 years ago. What is being sold under this name now is completely different from what grows for us. Ours are sweet, quite meaty, mid to mid-late season, excellent for canning/pickling, and beautiful. They are also good in salads.
The height of our Striped Pepper is a maximum of 70 cm (2.3 ft). It’s an outdoor variety; it sets its first truss about 20 cm (8 inches) from the ground, and it gets absolutely loaded with tomatoes hanging in clusters. It manages to grow 4-5 tiers per season. Color: Red with orange-yellow stripes, very ornamental, tasty, and perfectly suited for canning.
Mine grew exactly the same—one-to-one, nothing to add 😲. The stripes gleam like gold, and while unripe, like green gold. Very beautiful.
The taste (for my palate) is average. I can save seeds.
I grew a tomato that looked exactly like this, but under the name Striped Königsberg (Kenigsberg Polosatyy). It matched the looks and description, but the taste didn’t impress me at all—it turned out dry and tasteless, even though it’s a real beauty 😞.
“Striped Pepper” is a determinate variety, it didn’t grow taller than 70 cm (2.3 ft) even in the greenhouse…
A sturdy, well-leafed bush with very beautiful fruits… elongated, with bright yellow zig-zag stripes. The fruits are very firm and look incredibly unusual when pickled in jars 😋.
I was at an expo and bought a packet of “Striped Pepper” from S. Pomazan (Kiev region). The picture matches—red with yellow stripes. I don’t know if I should plant it? There are just so many varieties to try!
Amira-12 wrote:
I don’t know if I should plant it? There are just so many varieties to try!
Since you bought it, plant it.
My Striped Pepper is from SeDek seed company, height is listed as 1.6m (5.2 ft). I haven’t planted it yet. On the picture, it looks redder, and the yellow stripes are very tiny, almost like dotted lines.
Olga44 wrote:
My Striped Pepper is from SeDek seed company, height is listed as 1.6m.
I tried to grow that one for 3 years in a row. And I never got the stated variety! One year not a single seed germinated, and the other two years were blatant off-types (completely wrong seeds)! 😡 SeDek strikes again!
Cherry/Olya wrote:
…two other years blatant off-types!
Olya, did I not send you mine? Or did mine also grow into who-knows-what?
Cherry/Olya wrote:
SeDek strikes again!
Ah, thanks for the warning 🙏 😕 Should I just throw this packet away? 😕
I planted it this year. It turned out to be an off-type. Disappointing!
Here is my Striped Pepper, seeds from SeDek. It also stated 1.5-1.6m and the photo showed thin streaks on a red background. It turned out like this. For some reason I didn’t take a photo later when it was fully ripe, even though it sat on the counter for a long time.
And the height was most likely indicated for greenhouses; outdoors it was quite short.
Olga44 wrote:
Should I just throw this packet away? 😕
Olga, it’s always better to regret what you did rather than what you didn’t do. Plant it—then you’ll know for sure. You might actually like it.
My opinion on this variety can be summed up in one word: “Yuck” 🤢. It is as tasteless as it is beautiful—in any form. In jars, it’s an absolute disaster: tough as wood, completely flavorless, the skin doesn’t peel off, you end up having to throw half the tomato away.
By the way, I saved seeds just in case… you know, in case someone actually wants to try it 😛.
A normal Striped Pepper is tasty, and not woody at all, but rather meaty. And it’s delicious when canned.
Last summer I grew a variety called “Lokomotiv” from Tsvetushchiy Sad. It was red, but the shape of the tomatoes was exactly like Striped Pepper. There were so many of them on the bush, 120-130g each, but the fruits were so hard you could hammer nails with them. Now I’m afraid to plant other varieties with this elongated shape, I feel like they will all be bulletproof and impossible to bite into.
Marishka wrote:
A normal Striped Pepper is tasty, and not woody at all, but rather meaty. And it’s delicious when canned.
For me, it is one of my absolute favorites for canning precisely because of its meatiness! The skin is hard to peel, but I don’t mind chewing it and spitting it out 😄. The great thing is that it doesn’t turn into mush/slop in the jar. Lovers of juicy tomatoes just need to look for other varieties.
Svetikk wrote:
Lovers of juicy tomatoes just need to look for other varieties.
Svetlana, in your opinion, what variety can I plant that has the same shape as Striped Pepper, but is juicier in taste?
Elena62 wrote:
Svetlana, in your opinion, what variety can I plant that has the same shape as Striped Pepper, but is juicier in taste?
Auria, Korean Long (Koreyskiy Dlinnoplodnyy), and Siberian Hottabych—these are the ones I have tested.
My Striped Pepper. Seeds from Gavrish. Completely dry, not tasty.
I have seeds from a company called “Nash Sad”. It’s claimed to be an indeterminate (1m 50cm / 5 ft). “Sprawling plant with narrow leaves. Fruits are oval-spindle-shaped with a little beak, dark red with green shading, 60-80g, juicy, with a sweet-sour tomato taste, several per simple truss.”
Is this a completely different Striped Pepper? Has anyone planted or at least come across these seeds? Is it worth planting? 😕
BabushkaVesna wrote:
Is this a completely different Striped Pepper?
I purchased those exact seeds too.
Mine was originally from “Semena Altaya”, the height was stated as 150-200cm. They lied 😄 In the greenhouse it was just over a meter, and outdoors it was under a meter. A sturdy rugose/tree-type bush, doesn’t stretch during the seedling stage. Mid-season, productive. Firm, beautiful striped sausages around 60g (2 oz).
And look at the Striped Pepper I bought to plant in 2015! It has nothing in common with the tomatoes shown above.
Galinka wrote:
I purchased those exact seeds too.
Probably these seeds:
BabushkaVesna wrote:
I have seeds from a company called “Nash Sad”…
You can read about off-types from this company over here [link].
Here is what I ultimately got from that packet. But I’m happy with the off-type, I will save the seeds.
BabushkaVesna wrote:
I have seeds from a company called “Nash Sad”…
I ordered this tomato from the “Nash Sad” agricultural firm too. Did you end up planting it? If so, how did it perform?
BabushkaVesna wrote:
I have seeds from a company called “Nash Sad”…
I planted Striped Pepper last year, seeds from “Nash Sad”, the packet cost 17 rubles, expiration date up to 2017. The fruits looked very beautiful, literally like little peppers! Indeterminate, the bushes grew to two meters (6.5 ft), but very few fruits set.
Taste-wise—bland. The flesh is hard, not juicy, practically no seeds. On top of everything else, the tips of the green tomatoes started rotting (Blossom End Rot). My other varieties grew normally. I do not recommend planting this variety, except maybe just as a novelty.
Seeds from the forum… Grew outdoors in open ground – indeterminate… grew taller than me 😄. Very firm fruits – excellent for canning.
Bumping the thread, did anyone in the south grow it?
I grew it in the greenhouse; in the heat, it caught Blossom End Rot (BER). Taste-wise, I liked it: dense, almost no juice.
