📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Yelisey
- 🌍 Origin: A highly productive commercial variety from the well-known Russian seed company “Aelita”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Determinate (bush). An absolute workhorse of a plant that performs exceptionally well both in greenhouses and outdoors. Height varies from 24-40 inches (60-100 cm) outdoors, up to 5 feet (1.5 m) in a greenhouse.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Bright orange plum/paste tomatoes weighing around 2.5 oz (70 g). The flesh is firm with thick walls.
- 👅 Flavor: Good, classic tomato flavor. It can be a bit tart early in the season if lacking sunlight, but sweetens up nicely.
- 🥫 Best Uses: The ultimate canning tomato. Fruits do not split or crack in jars, and they store very well post-harvest.
A real workhorse of a determinate tomato. Grew it outdoors in Siberia during a not-so-great summer. It didn’t drop a single blossom on the trusses. I pruned it to 4 main stems, and it handled the heavy load with no problem at all.
The fruit is firm and exceptionally good for canning – it didn’t crack in the jars. At the beginning of the season, it was quite tart, but that was due to the lack of sun, as it was kept under heavy row cover. Later on, the sweetness increased significantly! A very beautiful and vibrant little tomato! It completely redeemed itself!
Sveta, which seed company is your Yelisey from?
Evgeniya wrote:
Sveta, which seed company is your Yelisey from?
Aelita*.
Grew it outdoors in 2015. Pruned it to a single stem, got 10 trusses with 30-40 tomatoes total. Early, gorgeous, and tasty. Very happy with it! Growing it again in 2016. My husband even started eating canned tomatoes because of this one! Very appetizing and bright!
Grew it in the greenhouse, didn’t prune the suckers, it grew to about 24-28 inches (60-70 cm). Set an absolute ton of fruit 😊 Bright orange plum tomatoes up to 2.5 oz (70 g). Had to tie the bush up multiple times, it gets quite bushy and voluminous. Mid-season. All the fruits ripened on the vine, medium firmness, good taste, and they store fairly well.
My Yelisey from 2018: A great variety, a real workhorse. I remember that on the first trusses, all the little tomatoes were practically the exact same size, so neat, beautiful, and large.
A workhorse and an excellent canning variety. Grown outdoors, the bushes were about 24-28 inches (0.6-0.7 m) tall, yields are very high. The fruits store well. I would rate the fresh eating flavor as good, but it’s really meant for canning :))
I really liked Yelisey. It grows well both in the greenhouse and outdoors. In the greenhouse, it reached about 5 feet (1.5 m) tall.
Outdoors, it was about 3.3 feet (1 m), grown without row covers. The photos here are from two weeks ago. Now Yelisey is managing to ripen nicely even under the open sky.
Huge thanks to Sveta @Svetikk for the seeds! 🙏
✂️ Pruning Tips for Yelisey Tomatoes
Hello! Could you please advise on the best way to prune Yelisey in a greenhouse?
Should I keep the suckers that appear below the first flower truss, or is it better to remove them? Keep the ones that appear in the leaf axils above the first truss?
How many trusses total can I leave on the bush so that the fruits have enough time to size up by the end of September or so… They just started blooming, and the first two fruits have set (though they are still tiny…)
Elena wrote:
Hello! Could you please advise on the best way to prune Yelisey in a greenhouse?
Good afternoon! When I grew Yelisey in the greenhouse, I didn’t remove the suckers at all (well, maybe just the very bottom one). Almost the entire crop successfully ripened on the vine.
Thanks for the reply! That’s exactly what I’ll do.
👨🌾 Editor’s Notes:
- *Aelita: One of the oldest and largest agricultural seed companies in Russia, heavily involved in breeding and preserving tomato varieties adapted to harsh, short-summer climates.
- Pruning Determinate Tomatoes: As seen in the discussion between Elena and Sveta, many Eastern European growers do not heavily prune determinate paste varieties like Yelisey. Leaving the suckers allows the plant to produce a massive flush of fruit that ripens all at once, which is ideal for big canning projects.
