📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Vishnya Zholtaya (Yellow Cherry)
- 🌍 Origin: A very popular commercial Russian cherry variety, often distributed by the “Gavrish” seed company. The name directly translates to “Yellow Cherry”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate and incredibly vigorous. Growers warn that if not strictly pruned, it will pump out excessive foliage and turn into a massive, sprawling tree that takes over your greenhouse.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Produces massive multiflora trusses with dozens (sometimes up to 60+) of tiny yellow cherry tomatoes. The size can range from literal pea-sized to about 1 oz (30 g), depending on the seed batch and pruning.
- 👅 Flavor Profile: Very polarizing. While some call it sweet, many growers found it to be tart, bland, or downright mouth-puckeringly sour if not left on the vine until it turns completely orange.
- ⚠️ Storage Warning (Wet Scar): This variety is notorious for a “wet picking scar”. When you pull the cherry off the vine, the skin often tears at the stem, leaving an open, wet wound on the fruit. Because of this, they do not store well and will begin to mold in a bowl within 24 hours.
Cherry type, indet (indeterminate), grew it in the greenhouse to a single main stem. Super productive, with a massive amount of flowers per truss and excellent fruit set. The fruits are yellow, round, and genuinely as small as a real cherry. Taste-wise, they are on the tart side.
But the packaging says it’s supposed to be sweet…. I haven’t planted it yet….. wanted to try it out. Is it worth it?
Vesna wrote:
But the packaging says it’s supposed to be sweet…. I haven’t planted it yet….. wanted to try it out. Is it worth it?
Give it a try, maybe that’s just how it turned out for me. Out of all the cherry tomatoes I grew, the sweetest one was Medovaya Kaplya (Honey Drop).
Ah, my Medovaya Kaplya turned out incredibly sour too…. which means this Yellow Cherry is going to be face-puckeringly sour 🤢 is the Red version just like this one in taste and looks?
Vesna wrote:
…is the Red version just like this one in taste and looks?
I haven’t grown the Red one, so I can’t answer that. But I forgot to mention about the Yellow one: it is very early, it was one of the very first ones to start ripening.
Meri wrote:
…I forgot to mention about the Yellow one: it is very early, it was one of the very first ones to start ripening.
For me, it was the exact opposite. We didn’t get to taste a single ripe tomato straight off the bush, we had to counter-ripen them all indoors. And they had a tartness to them. But other than that, the yield was great.
Valentina 54 wrote:
For me, it was the exact opposite. We didn’t get to taste a single ripe tomato straight off the bush, we had to counter-ripen them all indoors…
Maybe you had an off-type (wrong seeds)? (see my description below) 📝
Vesna wrote:
This year, absolutely all my tomatoes were sour, ranging from face-puckering to just a little tart…
Pay attention to the plant’s nutrition (all 13 elements, you can only slightly cross Chlorine off the list for tomatoes)… Of course, the amount of sunlight and heat also plays a role. Nutrition + Light + Heat = the guarantee for excellent tasting tomatoes )))))))))
Grew Yellow Cherry for the first time this year (in the greenhouse). As of June 25th, this variety tied for first place in earliness with Amur Tiger. Pros of the variety: early ripening, abundant fruiting right up until autumn (even when the stems are drying up, the tomatoes keep ripening). The taste of the first fruits and up to mid-season was good; towards the end of the season (as growing conditions worsened), the flavor became weak.
Variety description (based on 4 plants), 100% true to type. Ripening window: June 25 – September 20. Height: 6.5 ft (2 meters), indet (indeterminate), medium growth rate. The first trusses are simple (up to 20 fruits), subsequent ones are double and complex (multiflora). Fruit weight is 0.35-0.4 oz (10-12 g), round, yellow. On a bush pruned to 3 stems, I counted 320 fruits….
I will definitely keep planting this variety in the future – the kids eat them straight off the bush 😋🍅
Edited October 21, 2013 by bozon
I’ve realized that if you don’t have enough space in your greenhouse for cherry tomatoes, there’s absolutely no point in planting them outside… It was so heartbreaking when entire clusters of Yellow Cherry went from green to black overnight… 😠😠😠 (Late Blight).
Nelli wrote:
I’ve realized that if you don’t have enough space in your greenhouse for cherry tomatoes, there’s absolutely no point in planting them outside…
Nelli, for people like us, I opened a specific thread: “Tomatoes along the walkway”. Check it out, maybe you can plant them in some containers. That way you’ll have your cherry tomatoes. I also feel bad wasting prime greenhouse real estate on cherry tomatoes, but I still plant 2-3 roots. The yield from those three is about equal to half the yield of just one large beefsteak plant.
I planted 2 bushes of Yellow Cherry in the greenhouse right by the door, tied the stakes to the doorframes, and strictly pruned them to 1 main stem. The first truss was a simple one, but the subsequent ones had a million little tomatoes on them (don’t even try to count them). They aren’t particularly sweet, they have a tartness.
What I didn’t like is that when they are fully ripe, the tomatoes often tear off without the stem (leaving a wet picking scar), so they end up damaged/wounded. If you have little kids, it’s pretty and fun for them, but I’m not going to plant them again for now. Nobody eats them, everyone here prefers large, tasty tomatoes.
I didn’t like either the Yellow or the Red one. It pumps out way too much foliage, it literally turns into a massive tree, and the fruits are smaller than standard cherries. They aren’t sweet, and you can’t even can/pickle them…
I plant Yellow Cherry in the greenhouse every year. I agree with the previous reviews. I want to add that they only become tasty (sweet) when they are fully, completely ripe and take on an orangey tint (at first, they are just yellow). If you overwater them, the ripe fruits crack constantly.
As for the wet picking scar (tearing at the stem when picking)—in my opinion, this is a major flaw of this variety. It’s happened before where I pick a bowl of Yellow Cherries, forget about them, and the very next day mold is already starting to grow on the torn skin of some of the tomatoes.
Harvesting these tiny fruits is quite tedious. I try to save seeds only from the largest fruits, hoping I can “bulk up” the size of the tomatoes over generations. Based on my observations, disease resistance is average. I’m not ready to give up on this variety completely, but I’m limiting myself to just one bush.
I planted them last year, the packet was called “Vishnya Zholtaya Cherry” from the “Gavrish” seed company. Everyone’s photos here show literal pea-sized fruits, but mine were larger, I wouldn’t even call them cherry tomatoes 😂. The bushes were over 6.5 ft (2 meters) tall, completely smothered in fruit. They barely suffered from Late Blight (meanwhile, the famous variety “Dubok”, which is supposed to “escape” Late Blight, died right away, first in line 😢). But these stood strong until the very end.
However, the taste was just completely average, a bit bland. Decided not to plant them again, for my taste, they are just nothing special.
My Yellow Cherry (seeds from Udachnye Semena / Gavrish) turned out to be an off-type—1 oz (30 gram) orange tomatoes, 10 per truss, but they were tasty, so I saved the seeds.
But the Red Cherry from the same company matched the description perfectly—one of the trusses had 65 little tomatoes on it! I just cut the whole truss off, laid it on a platter, and we plucked them off to eat like grapes. Very sweet.
