Zagadka Prirody (Nature’s Riddle) Tomato Grower Reviews and Photos

My bush is indeterminate and very vigorous. The fruits are flat-round (oblate) with absolutely no hint of a heart shape.

What a beauty, makes you just want to eat it right off the screen! 👍

Zagadka Prirody from the SibSad company. I planted 4 bushes. It is now one of my absolute favorite varieties. Indeterminate, tall, and vigorous. The bush is beautiful, and the fruits are large, meaty, yellow-pink bicolors with a pink cap. Extremely productive.

I really loved this variety. Productive 🙌, tasty 😋, and beautiful 😍. Here is my Nature’s Riddle.

My Zagadka Prirody was very productive and large. Beautiful too. The taste was just ordinary for me. It’s good for salads, juices, and sauces. I liked it overall and will plant it again.

I only had one bush and literally got one long-awaited tomato off it 😂 (I planted it very late). But because of its incredibly rich flavor, this variety easily made it into my top ten best-tasting tomatoes of the year. 🙂

I liked these tomatoes too. Tasty, juicy, and so beautiful! But unfortunately, the constant rain and late blight ruined my harvest a bit.

Found a photo:

I really liked it this year. Tasty, average yield. Very beautiful fruits.

It really is incredibly tasty! It was my first year growing it, and now I will permanently keep it in my rotation right alongside Malakhitovaya Shkatulka (Malachite Box).

Yulia wrote:
It really is incredibly tasty! It was my first year growing it, and now I will permanently keep it in my rotation…

It’s a very interesting variety, it literally glows like a little sun.

The funny thing is that my grandson hates tomatoes, he always calls them yucky! But he actually ate these. We told him it was a bizarre exotic fruit, something similar to a peach. He devoured it so fast his ears were wiggling! 😂

This tomato definitely has a very unusual appearance, it really does look like something exotic. 🌺 Does it have any acidity to it, or is it completely sweet like Golden Drop?

Mine was completely sweet! Another unusual thing about it is how beautiful it looks when you slice it in half. The cross-section really looks like a fruit. It’s this pinkish-orange color with dark red flesh inside. I can’t even fully describe it! It truly is Nature’s Riddle!

Indeterminate, highly productive, vigorous bush about 6.5 ft (2 m) tall. The taste is sweet with zero acidity.

Joining the chorus here. It really is very tasty, productive, and unusual. There was almost no acidity, it was sweet and meaty. Absolutely everyone loved it.

I actually liked the taste of Feyerverk (Fireworks) better.

A tasty, large-fruited tomato with an average yield. I liked both the flavor and its appearance. I grew it outdoors under low tunnels, so maybe it would be more productive in a proper greenhouse.

I had two bushes. They reached about 8.2 ft (250 cm). Extremely weak, wimpy bushes. Mid-season variety. The fruits are stunningly beautiful, but the yield was just average. The taste seemed a bit watery to me. It heavily loses to Orange Russian 117, which is very similar. I’m giving up on this one.

Here is my Nature’s Riddle. It grew outdoors in the open ground, partially under tunnels. It was sweet and delicious whether I picked it at the breaker stage (blush) to ripen indoors, or let it fully ripen on the vine. Despite this cold summer, it showed a decent yield. The largest fruit was about 1.1 lbs (500 g). Out of all the varieties I planted outdoors, this one turned out to be very resilient and unfussy in bad weather conditions.

So which one of these is actually the correct one? SibSad has packaged all of these different variations under the exact same name in different years.

That truly is a wonderful riddle for Kseniya.

Rodebielesumer wrote:
That truly is a wonderful riddle for Ksenya.

Thank you! Those seeds came from different sources. The yellow one came from a fresh SibSad commercial packet, the bicolor was from a forum member, and the pink one was also from a forum member (I knew that one was going to be pink from the start). I had the chance to compare them all side-by-side because I was so excited I planted 18 bushes of Zagadka Prirody in my greenhouse. They all turned out well.

Here is my Riddle, seeds from Valeria (St. Petersburg) 🌺. It grew in the greenhouse, yield was massive 🙌🙌🙌. For me, it acted more like a mid-late season variety, and I’d classify the taste as sweet-tart and very meaty.

Here is my Zagadka Prirody. Seeds from SibSad. It was very tasty and productive. But I planted two bushes, and the second bush produced purely pink tomatoes. I thought I had just mixed up my tags. But then I talked to people who saved their own seeds, and many of them said it doesn’t grow true to type, it completely segregates in the next generation.

Wow, that’s news to me. 😳

That really is news. Does that mean it’s actually an F1 hybrid? Or just an unstable heirloom line?

My Zagadka Prirody. Seeds were from SibSad. It performed really well both in the greenhouse and outdoors in the open ground. 😋

Judging by the photo it doesn’t look like an off-type, but I didn’t like the taste at all, it was very watery. And on the first truss, the fruits were almost completely red and round. 😡

And here is my Zagadka Prirody, seeds from Popenko. Good taste, seemed like a fairly productive variety to me.

Jina wrote:
Is it a hybrid then? Or just an unstable line?

Most likely the second option.

It’s an old variety. 😳 What unstable traits are you talking about?

If it’s truly old, then it’s a total mystery.

Sveta, there’s no mystery. The seed companies just literally stuff different random seeds into the packets in different years. But the authentic version of the variety is amazing. Large and highly productive, which is very rare for bicolors in my growing conditions.

Ugh, you guys are such enablers. I value high yield a lot, assuming the taste is good, of course.

Sveta, it’s not a genetic mystery, it’s just a seed mix-up. The wimpy plant mentioned below is definitely NOT Zagadka Prirody.

elsa30 wrote:
Very weak, wimpy bushes. Taste seemed a bit watery to me. Loses heavily to Orange Russian 117.

My Zagadka Prirody is very stable and consistent. I got the exact same fruits this year as in the first photo I posted. The plant is incredibly vigorous and powerful. The fruits are oblate and massive, which naturally makes it a late-season variety. The color shifts from yellow to red depending on how ripe the fruit gets.

Elena, I completely agree, the bush is very powerful. Mine wasn’t late though, it was more mid-season. The fruits are meaty and sweet (this was from the seeds the forum girls sent me). But the seeds I got straight from the commercial packet gave me a wimpy, straggly bush with early, juicy, heart-shaped yellow tomatoes. They tasted different, but honestly, I liked them both.

Ksenya, SibSad is infamous for their off-types and seed mix-ups. The true, authentic Zagadka Prirody is a late-season variety with oblate, very large bicolor fruits and a massive, aggressive growth habit. It literally choked out and killed another variety I planted right next to it.

Lena, I’m not arguing with you. I was just comparing it to other bicolors. This particular strain has been grown in our region for a while and has fully adapted, so its ripening time naturally shifted earlier. But yeah, the plant is an absolute beast…

Can any of the pros tell me—are Zagadka Prirody and Virginia Sweets similar?

I really loved this variety. Tasty, sweet, and beautiful.

I liked Zagadka Prirody too. It wasn’t super productive for me, but it was incredibly tasty and beautiful. And the single largest tomato I grew this year actually came off this plant.

Tatiana (Kemerovo) wrote:
Do the pros know if ZP and Virginia Sweets are similar?

Taste and color is subjective… but personally, I vastly preferred the taste of ZP, and it was significantly more productive for me. The sweetness was much more pronounced in ZP compared to the others.

Big Rainbow (left), Virginia Sweets (right)

Drosera wrote:
Alisa, your 1st photo is labeled Big Rainbow, and there’s no Zagadka Prirody in your album.

You are right, they look so similar I completely got my photos mixed up… In my post above, that is indeed Big Rainbow. My photo of Zagadka Prirody must have gotten lost in one of my other albums. But regardless, out of all the bicolors I grow, I gave top honors to ZP for both its yield and its flavor. I dedicated an entire season to growing exclusively bicolors just to compare them side-by-side and decide which ones I would keep growing permanently.

Tatiana (Kemerovo) wrote:
Do the pros know if ZP and Virginia Sweets are similar?

No, they are completely different tomatoes. I grew them right next to each other. 😳

Elena_ wrote:
The true Zagadka Prirody is a late-season variety with oblate, very large bicolor fruits and a massive, aggressive growth habit.

I agree. This is definitely going on my plant list! 📝

Here is my ZP right out of a canning jar. Very tasty 😋.

Could you guys tell me how it behaves as a seedling? I have 2 little bushes growing from SibSad seeds and they are soooo tiny, almost like the ‘June’ micro-dwarf variety. Not wimpy or weak, just physically small. Is this an off-type, or is it supposed to be like that? All my other indeterminates planted at the exact same time as Zagadka Prirody are already absolute elephants! 😂😂

It’s a complete monster even as a seedling. I planted it for two years. Really liked it. But then I tried Lucky Cross and permanently switched to that instead. The flavor is much brighter, and the yield is higher.

What on earth did SibSad put in my packet then??? I really wanted Zagadka Prirody. Oh well, I’ll keep an eye on them. Maybe they’ll just suddenly shoot up out of nowhere 😂 and become monsters overnight! 😂😂

ZP turned out to be one of the tastiest, most productive, and largest varieties I grew. It took second place among all my record-breakers for weight.

– Bush appearance: mid-season, sprawling, rather wimpy and straggly.
– Fruit set: very sparse (maximum of 2 fruits set per bush).
– Height outdoors: 2.6 – 3.6 ft (0.8 – 1.1 m).
– Clusters: 1-2 fruits each.
– Overall yield: low.
– Fruit: oblate (flat), bright orange striped bicolor.
– Density of ripe fruit: low/soft.
– Taste: balanced, tasty, harmonious, sweetness gets a 5-.

Initial impression: a beautiful and tasty tomato, good for both fresh eating and processing. The downsides are the extremely low yield and the weak bush. Rating for seedlings – 4, bush – 4-, fruit – 5-, overall variety rating – 4+ (only because of the terrible yield).

Alena, where did you get those seeds? A weak bush and a low yield doesn’t sound like Zagadka Prirody at all.

Yeah Lenochek, the bush is very weak, I was pretty upset about it…

I got the seeds through a swap from a private collection.

Do you think it’s an off-type? 🤷‍♀️

Alena, I bought SibSad seeds once, and since then I’ve been saving my own seeds. Every single time, Zagadka Prirody is an incredibly aggressive grower. This year I accidentally tortured it as a seedling, but it still bounced back, set fruit reliably, and barely lost any fruit size. Other people who got my seedlings grew even bigger fruits.

Also, the coloration in your photos is not typical for ZP fruits. ZP is yellow with a large pink-orange patch radiating from the blossom end. The riper it gets, the larger that patch becomes, until it almost fully colors the tomato (especially in full sun). Yours looks like it just has weird streaks on it.

Yeah, mine looks more like it has rays or streaks on it…

So it’s definitely an off-type. 🤷‍♀️

Zagadka Prirody 2015 😋😋😋

Tasty, very beautiful, and productive variety 👍. They are huge, you slice up just one tomato and boom – you have a whole salad 🙌. I will absolutely be growing it again.

I also really love Zagadka Prirody. This is my third year growing it. It never lets me down – large, tasty, and productive.

I liked it too. It completely matched the description. You can use it in salads, eat it fresh, or can it in gelatin – it’s lovely. It actually got sweeter starting from the second fruit truss, maybe because I sprayed them with a baking soda solution. I will definitely plant it from my own saved seeds next year 👍.

I planted two bushes of Zagadka this year… From this packet. Batch number 1190. Something completely incomprehensible grew out. I’m assuming it’s a seed mix-up. The tomato is tiny and soooo incredibly sour. I don’t even remember the last time I tasted something this sour. This is how it’s growing, and this is the tomato itself.

A truss on my Zagadka Prirody literally snapped from the weight today. I had to pick the largest one off the cluster. The trusses are so heavy. Almost no blossom drop for me this year.

NatalyaLu wrote:
Something completely incomprehensible grew out. I’m assuming it’s a seed mix-up. The tomato is tiny and soooo incredibly sour.

Yes, that is definitely not Zagadka Prirody. You used to be able to trust SibSad 5-6 years ago, but in recent years buying from them is just a lottery.

I also have Zagadka Prirody from SibSad. One bush grew in the greenhouse, the other outside. I picked the outdoor ones at the breaker stage (blush), they ripened indoors in just a few days, but the taste was totally bland. I was actually pretty upset, because the yield on this tomato is quite decent.

But today I found a fully ripe tomato out in the greenhouse. I should mention that I tasted the first ones when they just got slightly soft and colored up like the picture on the packet. But this one was almost a solid, uniform red-orange color, and incredibly soft.

It weighed in at 12.7 oz (360 g), so not huge, but oh my god was it delicious!!! The cross-section was two-toned, very beautiful, buttery, and juicy. It literally felt like I had pulled a slice of fruit out of a marinade or syrup. The sweetness wasn’t a “tomato” sweetness at all, it reminded me of a canned peach. 🤫

The yield is making me happy too – there are about 10 more tomatoes just like it hanging on the bush… even though the entire second truss aborted during the heatwave, and the third truss partially aborted too. 😳

Sorry for no photos… I got too caught up in tasting it and forgot to take a picture! 😂

An excellent, productive, tall variety (reached 6.5 ft / 2 m in the greenhouse), mid-season ripening. The fruits were large, incredibly tasty, juicy, and sweet.

Can someone tell me how Big Rainbow differs from Zagadka Prirody?

I’ve been growing Zagadka Prirody for at least 4 years. Only the very first year was from store-bought seeds, now I only sow my own saved seeds. I haven’t seen any genetic segregation, I guess I just got lucky! The taste and color heavily depend on weather conditions – during the hot and dry summer of 2015, it was divine! This summer was cold and rainy, and consequently, the fruits didn’t have that vibrant flavor and their color was much paler.

I grew Big Rainbow for the first time this year, in the greenhouse, specifically right next to ZP so I could compare them. Big Rainbow set fruit earlier than ZP, but started ripening much later and the fruits were significantly smaller. The color was very pale, almost entirely lacking the red marbling. The taste didn’t impress me at all. I’ll try repeating it once more, but most likely I’ll abandon Big Rainbow in favor of ZP. But that’s just our specific climate region, I bet in a warmer climate Big Rainbow would show its full potential! In short, until you grow it yourself, you won’t know! 🤷‍♀️

I planted Zagadka Prirody 2 years ago. Extremely productive variety!!! Harmonious flavor, but the sweetness definitely dominates. All the fruits were large. Seeds came from our dear Angelina. It’s probably time to grow it again from my saved seeds. 🙂

Is this an off-type? 🙁🤷‍♀️ Seeds were from Angelina… On the 1st truss the fruits are almost completely red and round 😡

Help me figure this out… I grew the Lucky Cross tomato this year. Absolutely loved it – both the yield and the taste! Visually, the fruits look incredibly similar to ZP – both on the outside and when sliced. I also have Zagadka seeds (some girls from this forum shared them with me). Tell me, how do these varieties differ? Is one of them noticeably sweeter than the other?

Seeds from Baba Yaga, and she got them from SibSad. My absolute yield favorite of 2018. I pulled 11.4 lbs (5.2 kg) off a single bush, which is totally super for my open ground garden! To be honest, the taste didn’t blow me away, it leaned closer to bland for me, but I’m going to keep trying to dial it in. It’s a beauty!

I’m growing this variety for the third summer now. Originally got it from SibSad, now I use my own saved seeds. Today I planted 9 bushes of it, completely replacing all the other bicolors I used to grow. I love the taste, the yield is great, and the fruits are gorgeous. I also want to mention that when you pick them green to ripen indoors, they don’t spoil or get mushy/weepy, they actually have a pretty good shelf life. It’s been three weeks and we are still feasting on these “indoor ripened” tomatoes.

Planting Zagadka Prirody for the second year. And it’s a failure again. The bush grew in the greenhouse. Reached 5 – 5.5 ft (1.5-1.7 m). Quite “skinny” and straggly. Low yield. Late season. I pulled the very first one at the end of September. In terms of taste, it’s definitely not a leader among bicolors (in 2016-17 Orange Russian 117 was better, and this year Tuxhorn’s Red & Yellow was better). I’ll keep trying. Hopefully, I’ll get it right eventually. This is the first one. Also the largest. The rest are no bigger than 7 oz (200 g).

Mine wasn’t just a bush, it was a massive beast of a plant! By the end of the season, after a heavy rainstorm, it completely collapsed from the sheer weight of the fruit, pulling its support stake down with it! I definitely dropped the ball on pruning the suckers…

The yield is high, the beauty of the fruit is undeniable, and that is exactly where the pros end. This variety is way overhyped and doesn’t deserve the praise.

It was one of the very first bicolors available here, so the average gardener had nothing to compare it to—hence the “myth” of its wonderful taste. Time passed, and the market flooded with bicolors. Against the backdrop of all the American heirlooms, ZP’s flavor completely falls flat. The taste of this variety fluctuates wildly from fruit to fruit and day to day, but overall it remains bland with a slight sour note and a distinct lack of sweetness, which you naturally expect from such a beautiful tomato. But alas… 🤷‍♀️

Uef wrote:
The yield is high, the beauty of the fruit is undeniable, and that is exactly where the pros end. This variety is way overhyped and doesn’t deserve the praise… Against the backdrop of all the American heirlooms, ZP’s flavor completely falls flat.

I agree completely and entirely. You could say the exact same thing about the similar variety Olympic Fire.

My ZP tasted quite delicious, even compared to some American bicolors. And given its huge yield, it is a very worthy variety to grow.

I’ll add my two cents. In the greenhouse, ZP was absolutely terrible—zero yield and tasteless. Completely bland even into the fall, and the fruits were small.

HOWEVER, in the open ground it was quite early, insanely productive, VERY large-fruited, and extremely beautiful—a gorgeous, warm peach color with a washed-out blush. The bush outdoors was more compact and shorter than the “greenhouse” version, but much thicker and more powerful. The outdoor tomatoes actually had some flavor compared to the greenhouse ones, but it was still kind of… unbalanced. It had sharp, sudden notes of either acidity or sweetness, then sudden blandness, there was no harmony. King Pineapple was infinitely tastier, had a better shape, and practically matched it in yield.

The ZP fruits outdoors were large, very large, and extremely large (thankfully I avoided the 2.2 lb/1 kg giants). They ranged from 12 oz to 23 oz (350 to 650 g), and some were a bit misshapen. Which brings up the question of what to do with them. For fresh eating, there are much tastier varieties. For juicing, red tomatoes are better. And canning such massive fruits is problematic. So we mostly just gave them away as exotic novelties.

Outdoors it didn’t catch any diseases, just some slight leaf drying. The wind banged the fruits against the trellis and each other a bit. It grew in the outer row on the southwest side, got tons of light (sunlight is brutal in my region – rain is rare, clouds are too). It didn’t get sunscald.

Following up, attaching a photo of my Zagadka Prirody from 2018. This is from the open ground.

I bought SibSad seeds this year. I’m reading this forum and I have absolutely lost all understanding of what is going to grow in my garden. The reviews are all over the place – this tomato can apparently be highly productive or not at all, sweet and tasty or bland and tasteless, beautiful or misshapen, mid-early or late, wimpy or a total monster. It truly is a RIDDLE! I’m going to plant just one bush as a scouting mission. I’ll report back on what I get. 🙂

Nadya wrote:
It truly is a RIDDLE! I’m going to plant just one bush as a scouting mission. I’ll report back on what I get. 🙂

I really like ZP. Large, beautiful. With bicolors, their taste heavily depends on the sun. From what I’ve noticed, if the weather is sunny, all my tomatoes turn out delicious.

Nadya wrote:
It truly is a RIDDLE! I’m going to plant just one bush as a scouting mission.

That’s exactly what this tomato remained for me: a riddle) It grew in the greenhouse, loaded itself with tons of fruit, didn’t skip a single truss, even when it got extremely hot. Beautiful, but… Off the exact same bush, one tomato would be delicious, and the next one would be tasteless. Maybe it was a miscalculation in my watering/feeding regime. I sowed my own saved seeds this year, we will see.

Natushkad wrote:
Off the exact same bush, one tomato would be delicious, and the next one would be tasteless. Maybe it was a miscalculation in my watering/feeding regime.

Some fruits might have been shaded by leaves, meaning they got more water and less potassium. Bicolors require very moderate watering; heavy watering completely washes out the sugars (salts). For me, bicolors at the beginning of the season are always inferior in taste to the ones at the end of the season due to the low night temperatures and extremely hot days. But when the days get less brutally hot at the end of the season and balance out with the nights, the fruits become pure heaven.

Also, with bicolors, you really have to catch the exact perfect moment of ripeness. Pick it underripe – tasteless. Pick it overripe – tasteless. It takes practice to catch the exact window when it peaks.

My ZP was a massive, late-season, but highly productive plant, and to my taste, it was delicious. It set fruit through the heatwave and never got sick.

My Zagadka Prirody

Grew in the greenhouse. Extremely productive.

A wonderful variety! Growing it for the fifth year. Beautiful, abundant, and tasty. Love forever.

I had SibSad seeds. They didn’t even sprout 🙁

I’ve been planting this variety for a long time. It suits me perfectly. If there is a lack of sun, even the absolute best-tasting tomato will grow out completely bland. But if the sun is there, any tomato gets a completely different flavor. That’s my firm belief, and it’s proven true every single year.

Planted it for 2 years, and it’s on my list for a third. Got my seeds from Tomatych. EXTREMELY productive in the greenhouse, quite tasty, but I practically don’t water my greenhouse at all in the summer. I watered maybe 4 times total (I should note my soil is loam transitioning into heavy clay). And the way it fruits is fascinating – it looks like all the other plants have already set fruit, while this one is seemingly still just flowering. A couple of weeks pass – and BAM, it’s covered in massive fruits. The bush is powerful. This year it actually fell over and ripped all its ties down under the sheer weight of the tomatoes.

The only annoyance this year was that it had black veins running through the flesh, though they disappeared when it fully ripened. Because of that, I just used them all for canning in their own juice and for sauces. But the insane yield + resilience against bad weather easily outweighs the negatives.

Asya wrote:
I only had one bush and literally got one long-awaited tomato off it 😂

I grew it in the greenhouse in 2019. Planted 1 bush and also got exactly 1 tomato. But it weighed 1.6 lbs (750 g) and was extremely tasty.

I completely agree with everyone talking about the sun. This past season I grew 2 bushes. One was practically in full sun, the other was stuck in the far corner of the greenhouse where sunlight was scarce. Let me tell you, the taste of the fruits from those two different bushes was absolutely night and day. The only thing the difference in lighting didn’t affect was their bicolor appearance. Both bushes produced stunningly beautiful fruits.

Following up..))

Planted ZP for the first time. It is growing in a poly greenhouse, shaded by the other rows of tomatoes. I probably won’t get a great flavor since it won’t get enough sunshine. But I will definitely still save seeds from it, it’s a very promising variety. It sets fruit well, and the tomatoes aren’t small.

I also planted ZP for the first time. I’m reading the comments about this tomato and realizing that my bush is actually not vigorous at all, quite the opposite. But that didn’t stop it from loading up with fruit. It was actually the very first one to start showing fruit for me. We’ll see how the taste turns out.

Photo from June 28, 2020.

tomatinka wrote:
I’ve been planting this variety for a long time… If the sun is there, any tomato gets a completely different flavor.

Vera, I ordered seeds from you and I’m looking through them now. I wanted to ask, are your “Zagadka” and “Zagadka Prirody” the same variety?

Circling back to the topic of Zagadka Prirody. In 2020 it turned out to be extremely tasty and early for me. I planted it again last year. Didn’t let me down.

This variety is a beauty and an absolute workhorse! I have nothing but praise for it! Tasty, productive, large, and gorgeous! I planted 2 bushes this year and will absolutely repeat it next season. A remarkable variety!