📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Zheltye Grebeshki (Yellow Crests)
- 🌍 Origin: A very popular Russian heirloom variety. The name “Yellow Crests” comes from the unique shape of the fruits, which often feature a pronounced, sharp, curved point (beak) at the blossom end.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall) and vigorous. Best grown pruned to 2-3 main stems. Highly responsive to potassium fertilizers.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Bright yellow/orange oxhearts, often developing a pink blush on the outside and a red marbling inside. Weight ranges heavily from 4 to 17 oz (120-500 g). The higher up the vine, the more pronounced the “beaks” become!
- 👅 Flavor & Texture: Melting, buttery flesh. The flavor is highly dependent on weather and soil. In good conditions, it is incredibly sweet and fruity (described as tasting like pineapple or honey). In shade or poor weather, it can become quite bland.
Seeds are from V. Redko. Growing this for the first time. Growing in the greenhouse, but I planted an extra sucker outdoors, and it’s doing great. Indet, tall, started ripening for me in early July from a February 24th sowing. Turned out very productive and, of course, absolutely gorgeous.
The fruits have elongated points/beaks (looks a lot like Vater Rhein), bright yellow, almost glowing from the inside. At first, I didn’t like the taste. They seemed a bit too tart, so I didn’t eat any more of them and just gave them away. Today I picked a lot of ripe fruits and tasted them – the flavor completely changed, a wonderful sweetness appeared.
The photos are all from a single bush, just different trusses. Very similar to Vater Rhein, they make a delicious couple!
Edited November 28, 2018 by Pomidoroved (Admin)
A very beautiful, productive, tall variety with bright orange fruits. The fruit shape looks like crests, ranging from blunt hearts to sharp-beaked ones… I grew the plants in the greenhouse, pruned to 2-3 stems… The plants are highly productive, building multiple fruit trusses (3-4 fruits per truss), mid-season ripening. Prefers a sunny, unshaded location.
The fruits have a dense, thick, buttery flesh, very tasty, juicy, with sweetness being the dominant flavor… Seeds were from Olechka from Belarus 🌺
Look at how beautiful they are when sliced – it looks like “artistic painting” with crimson spots and streaks inside…
Yaroslavna wrote:
A very beautiful, productive, tall variety… Prefers a sunny, unshaded location.
I agree with almost all of that description. My seeds were from Manusha. The flavor varied from slightly tart at the beginning of the season to overwhelmingly sweet by the end of the season. The flesh is very pleasant, juicy, and melting. Mine was a sunny-yellow, glowing shade, leaning more towards pale yellow tones.
The variety absolutely loves the sun. Sown in February in my conditions, it acted as a mid-early variety, while the March sowing turned out mid-season. It is much better to prune it to 2-3 stems, because if you prune it to a single stem, the yield drops drastically. Single-stem pruning didn’t increase fruit size or speed up ripening time at all. Early in the season during sharp temperature swings outdoors, it dropped blossoms on the first two trusses (though it still set 2-3 fruits), but it completely stopped dropping blossoms during the summer heat. Weight ranged from 4 oz to 17 oz (120 g to 500 g). The average was around 7 oz (200 g).
However, I had to jump through some hoops at first until I realized this variety is a heavy feeder of potassium. I fed it a few times with wood ash and a potassium-heavy complex fertilizer, and it immediately rewarded me. I think it would have done even better in a greenhouse than outdoors.
An incredibly beautiful variety, you just can’t take your eyes off it! The fruits that get direct sunlight develop pink stripes on the outside, and a little pink starburst inside. An old man at my work, who has seen many tomatoes in his life (he’s from the prime tomato-growing regions of the former USSR) said he had never seen such beauty in his entire life!
Alisa wrote:
An old man at my work… said he had never seen such beauty in his entire life!
👏👏👏 🌺🌺🌺
Guys, here are my Yellow Crests (double-click to enlarge). Even so, the camera couldn’t capture the full beauty of these little suns!
OH, Alisa!!! And you’ve been hiding this beauty until now!!! 👍
Your Crests are simply gorgeous!!!
And that first photo is so professional – the Crests look like they are made of solid honey! 🤯
You have a good eye! The first photo was taken with my husband’s DSLR camera, and the rest were with my simple old point-and-shoot.
Interestingly, the higher up the truss is on the plant, the more fancy and pronounced the pointy beaks get!
Edited September 16, 2016 by Alisa
Grew in the greenhouse in a slightly shaded spot. Tall, mid-season, lemon-colored fruits with pink streaks inside, weight around 7 oz (200 g). Wasn’t very productive, dropped blossoms in the heat. I didn’t like the taste. Beautiful, though. Not planning to grow it again anytime soon.
Ovechka wrote:
I didn’t like the taste.
Lyuda, what exactly didn’t you like about the taste? Was it too tart, too sweet, bland, or balanced? What constitutes a “tasty” tomato for you?
I loved the Crests, productive, beautiful, and most importantly, very tasty 😋 Especially since I rarely stumble upon truly delicious yellow-fruited varieties.
Alisa wrote:
What constitutes a “tasty” tomato for you?
Sweet-and-sour flavor for red and black varieties. For yellows and oranges – I love the taste of Golden Königsberg. For bicolors – I don’t care what they taste like, I just eat them because they look pretty 😂 And yesterday I tasted Malachite Box (Malakhitovaya Shkatulka), absolutely delicious, sweet-and-sour, even though it was picked unripe and ripened on the counter.
My Yellow Crests turned out pretty bland.
Mine turned out beautiful and productive, but still slightly on the bland side..
One of the absolute favorites of the 2017 season for yield, beauty, and taste! 👍👍👍 Loved everything about it! Grew 2 bushes in the greenhouse pruned to 2 stems, indets, fruited all the way up to the roof. The flavor of the vine-ripened ones was incredible, with an obvious sweetness 😋 Not a late variety, the entire crop ripened on the vine, it was one of the very first indets to start ripening. The largest crests weighed up to 1.1 lbs (500 g).
I wanted this tomato so badly. One of my main wish-list varieties this year. Finally managed to find it in one place, had to place a huge seed order just to get this one variety. And it was so worth it. Tasted it today. 😋 It feels like you’re eating a pineapple, not a tomato! We had rain every single day for 2 months this year, all my other tomatoes are bland, but this one is just like honey. Really loved this variety!
Loved the variety, seeds from Tomatanya. These are the exact ones I’m holding in my profile picture. The bush was loaded, didn’t catch any diseases. The flavor leaned towards bland, but… I just like yellow tomatoes!
Shevyachok wrote:
The flavor leaned towards bland
I was super surprised, but on the exact same bush, I had some fruits that were intensely sweet and others that were completely bland!
Very beautiful and productive crests. But the taste was absolute zero for me, soft and mealy/mushy. I don’t know what it was lacking in my soil. 🤷♀️
Grew this variety again, it didn’t disappoint – beautiful, productive, and tasty 👍 Added to my “Love Forever” top-tier variety list 💌
Edited January 6, 2019 by Svetikk
I’ll add some more crests. It is incredibly early, started ripening right alongside Iyunskiy (June).
Grew it again this year, turned out very productive, beautiful, and tasty, despite the extreme heat.
One of the best yellow-fruited varieties. Very productive. The fruits are beautiful and delicious.
Grew it outdoors in 2018. Definitely worthy of growing again.
I have no idea what grew for me? Not a single heart-shaped fruit on the bush, they are all oblate beefsteaks. Most of the tomatoes are quite large, around 14-17 oz (400-500 g).
Edited July 23, 2020 by T@tk@
T@tk@ wrote:
Not a single heart-shaped fruit on the bush, they are all oblate beefsteaks.
They are very beautiful and uniform, but they definitely aren’t Crests. Though if the flavor turns out good, you should keep it in your collection, since they are so large and uniform.
Thanks, I’ll keep seeds if it’s tasty. Haven’t tried it yet… I’ll let it sit on the counter for about three days first.
Even the kittens approved.
Productive, beautiful fruits.
In 2019, I planted two bushes. One grew yellow as it was supposed to, and the second one grew bright red.
I saved seeds from the red tomato, and this year I planted two bushes of the “red crests”. And once again, one grew red and one grew yellow.
The original seeds were from Svetikk.
I plant two bushes of Yellow Crests every single year, I love them for their earliness, beauty, yield, and taste.
- Potassium Feeding: Alisa mentions struggling with the variety until she fed it with wood ash and potassium. Yellow and bicolor oxhearts are notorious heavy feeders. When they lack potassium, the fruits often become mushy, mealy, and completely bland/tasteless. A simple dose of potash when the fruits are sizing up can turn a bland tomato into a sugary, melting delight!
- Crossed Seeds & Segregation: Tamara shares a fascinating story about planting seeds from a yellow tomato, getting a red one, saving seeds from the red one, and getting a mix of red and yellow plants the next year. This is a classic example of an F2/F3 segregating hybrid! A bee likely cross-pollinated the original yellow tomato flower with pollen from a red tomato. The resulting seeds carried both genes, and since red is genetically dominant, the offspring flipped back and forth between the two colors.
