📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Zheltye Dlinnye (Yellow Long)
- 🌍 Origin: A true, unnamed family heirloom from Russia. It has been passed down and saved by the thread author’s family since her great-grandmother’s time. The name “Yellow Long” is simply a working title.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Semi-determinate to indeterminate. Reaches about 5.2 ft (160 cm) in height. Suitable for both greenhouse and outdoor cultivation.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Elongated, thick, oval-shaped plum tomatoes. When fully ripe, the color shifts from yellow to a deep, rich orange. Fruits are large for a paste type, weighing 7 to 16 oz (200-450 g), and measuring up to 6 inches (15 cm) long.
- 👅 Flavor: Outstandingly sweet and meaty. While the shape is typical for a processing tomato, the taste is so good it is primarily grown for fresh slicing and salads.
We have had this variety for a very long time; I have no idea who originally bred it or anything like that. It was first grown by my great-grandmother. It just stuck with us, and we plant it every single year.
The fruits are elongated, thick, weighing from 7 to 16 oz (200 to 450 grams) when grown in a greenhouse. When fully ripe, they are a deep, saturated yellow – almost orange. They are tasty, meaty, sweet, and mainly used for fresh salads. The shape is an elongated oval, reaching a maximum length of about 4.7-6 inches (12-15 cm) and a diameter of 2.3 inches (6 cm).
The yield on the bush varies every year – if the climate cooperates, there’s a lot, but if the weather is bad, the yield isn’t great. However, they are absolutely worth growing just for the taste alone, even in a bad harvest year. We’ve tried planting other commercial varieties with a similar description – they just aren’t the same.
Edited November 22, 2015 by Drosera
Marinochka, wow those are some fine-looking tomatoes… gorgeous. I copied your photos to my computer folder so I wouldn’t forget about them. 😉👍
Marisha, I’m planning to plant them in the greenhouse, but you didn’t mention how tall the plant gets 📝
Mila wrote:
Marisha, I’m planning to plant them in the greenhouse, but you didn’t mention how tall the plant gets 📝
It gets to be about my height, around 5.2 ft (160 cm).
Marishka wrote:
It gets to be about my height, around 5.2 ft (160 cm).
Well, I’ve copied them to my list too. I definitely plan to put them in the greenhouse; they are just too gorgeous 😳 let them grow safely inside their little house 😳
Marisha, this is what they look like right now 😍
Alena Andreeva wrote:
Marisha, this is what they look like right now 😍
Alena, did you upload the wrong photo by mistake? 😳 That doesn’t look like Yellow Long in the picture, it looks like something else maybe.
Although, looking closer, maybe it is them 😅 But for some reason, I’m having doubts.
Edited June 29, 2013 by Marishka
Marisha, absolutely impossible that I mixed them up. You remember how stubborn they were as seedlings 😫 I only had 5 seeds, and they only sprouted on the second attempt, taking 10 days or even more to finally pop up. I was guarding them like a hawk, so there’s no way I could have mixed them up 🙂
Alena Andreeva wrote:
Marisha, absolutely impossible that I mixed them up… I was guarding them like a hawk, so there’s no way I could have mixed them up 🙂
Then it’s just my eyes playing tricks on me. I definitely need a vacation! 😂
They have those exact same green shoulders at first 😳, and well, your soil is fantastic 👍, whereas we just have solid clay. These are sitting in the greenhouse; the second surviving seedling is outdoors and is only just now starting to bloom.
Marishka, Alena, yes that is definitely it, Yellow Long, because I have a fruit that looks exactly like that, with that little pointy beak, don’t worry.
Yellow Long, seeds from MamaAntona. 🌺 On the lower trusses, they are fatter plums; higher up the vine, they get thinner and longer. The bush height was a bit over 5 ft (1.5 meters). The color is beautiful (the photo didn’t capture it very well).
- Green Shoulders: Alena mentions that the unripe fruits have distinct “green shoulders.” In many old family heirlooms, a dark green crown around the stem is completely normal. Modern commercial tomatoes were bred to eliminate this gene (making the whole fruit pale green before turning red) so they look uniformly red in the supermarket. However, many growers believe that the “green shoulder” gene is actually linked to higher sugar content and better flavor!
