📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Sun Gold F1 (Sold as “Cherry Zlato”)
- 🌍 Origin: Originally bred in Japan, this is the legendary Sun Gold F1 hybrid. However, Russian seed companies (repackaging Johnsons Seeds) mistakenly labeled and sold it as an open-pollinated (OP) variety under the translated name “Cherry Zlato” (Gold).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: A very vigorous, tall indeterminate vine. It doesn’t push out an overwhelming amount of suckers compared to other cherries, making it fairly easy to manage. Highly disease-resistant and produces all the way until frost.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Bright orange cherry tomatoes. Most growers report excellent crack resistance, though they can split during late-season temperature swings.
- 👅 Flavor: Universally praised as one of the sweetest tomatoes in existence. It has a rich, candy-like, honey flavor. Warning: Because it is an F1 hybrid, saving seeds (growing out the F2 generation) results in genetic segregation—you will get red or pale yellow cherries that lose that signature magical sweetness.
Cherry Zlato. The seeds are from Johnsons. It’s an indeterminate, gets very tall, and doesn’t get overly bushy with suckers. Mid-season. A highly productive variety. It’s very low-maintenance and disease-resistant. It kept setting fruit right up until we pulled the plants for the winter.
The fruits are bright orange little globes with an intensely sweet, honey-like flavor. This is hands down the sweetest tomato variety I have ever tasted in my life. It has earned a permanent spot on my grow list, I will be planting it every single year.
Edited January 22, 2015 by Drosera
I really liked this variety too, I’ll definitely be growing it again.
Nelya wrote:
Cherry Zlato… intensely sweet, honey-like flavor. This is hands down the sweetest tomato variety I have ever tasted in my life.
How does it compare to Honey Drop, which one is sweeter? Or can you name any other sweet varieties, but Zlato is still sweeter than them?
This year I grew 48 different varieties, including Honey Drop. There’s probably no point in listing them all out. Zlato is sweeter than all of them. It literally tastes like a sweet tomato that somebody sprinkled extra sugar on top of. 😉 🙂
Nelya, sweeter than Honey Drop?! 😛 I’m sold. I’m officially getting in line to beg you for some seeds! 🌸 🌸 🌸
Oh, I forgot to ask, does it crack? A lot of cherries suffer from that problem.
Edited November 18, 2013 by Vestochka
I’d say it doesn’t crack, I maybe had 2 or 3 split tomatoes on the entire plant. 🙂 Besides, in my garden, they just didn’t have time to crack before we ate them all! 😂 😂 😂
I seriously thought nothing was sweeter than Honey Drop… I’m amazed. Getting in line for seeds too! 😳
Nelya wrote:
Cherry Zlato. The seeds are from Johnsons.
Nelya, was there an original English name printed anywhere on the small inner foil packet inside the big colorful one?
My Zlato grew from seeds I got from Nelya in Ufa. They were super tasty! 😋
Nelya, tagging onto Sasha’s question, how many seeds were actually in the packet? Like 10, or a whole bunch? For example, if there were only 10, it could easily be an F1 hybrid, whereas they usually dump a ton of open-pollinated heirloom seeds into a pack. 🤩
My Zlato actually had a bit of a tang to them at first. They really started packing on the sweetness in the second half of the summer, and towards the very end of the season, a few of them did start to crack on me.
I’ve been growing Zlato for 4 years now. The last time I bought a pack at Leroy Merlin, there were exactly 10 seeds in it, and it cost 132 rubles. On the inner foil packet, it actually said TOMSUNGO 103174/F, and on a tiny sticker attached to the main packet it said “free LABEL”. Galina (Esme) mentioned somewhere on the forum that she tried growing it from her own saved seeds, but nothing good came of it. I agree though, there is absolutely no cherry sweeter than this one.
Nelya, in 2014, did you grow these from your own saved seeds or straight from the packet? I grew from the packet in 2014, and now I’m wondering what will happen if I plant my own saved seeds. My original seeds were from Johnsons. Also, did you grow yours in a greenhouse or outdoors?
Nelya already answered your questions—just use the forum “Search” function.
But I’ll give you the short version. We grew them from the exact same packets as Sveta. The Russian packaging company incorrectly labeled it as an open-pollinated variety. But on the inner packet from Johnsons, there is an abbreviated name: TOMAT SUN GOLD. In the actual breeder’s catalog, this is an F1 HYBRID! It is literally that famous “sweetest tomato in the world.” It’s supposed to be orange and highly resistant to cracking. It’s highly possible they are already selling us F2 seeds in some batches. I was personally disappointed by how tiny the fruits were and the overall yield was low, it’s really only good as a garden snack.
In 2014, Nelya grew 2 plants from her own saved seeds. Like all indeterminates, she grew them in a greenhouse. She was very disappointed with the results: genetic segregation happened. One bush produced bright yellow cherries, and the other produced red ones. The taste was somewhat sweet, but completely lacked that signature honey flavor of the original.
I see ElenaN had much better luck with hers.
Zulfiya, thanks for the explanation. My yield wasn’t great either, the fruits were tiny but extremely sweet. I’m going to try planting them outdoors in open ground this year and see what happens.
This forum thread is a brilliant example of internet gardening detective work! Large international seed conglomerates often sell bulk seeds to regional packagers. In this case, a Russian company bought bulk seed from Johnsons (a UK company) for the world-famous Japanese hybrid Sun Gold F1. Instead of marketing it as Sun Gold, they translated it to “Zlato” (meaning Gold in Russian) and completely forgot to label it as an F1 Hybrid.
Because it wasn’t labeled as a hybrid, many Russian growers innocently saved the seeds for the next year, expecting the exact same tomatoes. However, because F1 hybrids don’t breed true, the F2 generation seeds experienced genetic segregation, resulting in plants that reverted to the parent genetics (producing red or yellow cherries) and completely losing that legendary Sun Gold sweetness!
