📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Zelenaya Slastyona (Green Sweet Tooth)
- 🌍 Origin: A highly regarded Russian green-when-ripe variety. The name translates perfectly to “Green Sweet Tooth”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), but generally acts well-behaved and compact. Outdoors in the dirt, it usually stays around 3.3-4.3 feet (1-1.3 m). In a greenhouse, it can push 5.2 feet (1.6 m). Growers usually prune it to 2 stems.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Medium-to-large beefsteaks. They stay green when ripe but develop a slight yellowish/amber blush on the skin when fully mature.
- 👅 Flavor: Lives up to its name! It is exceptionally sweet, to the point where some growers find it almost sugary. Pro Tip: It must be allowed to ripen fully on the vine to unlock its sweetness. If you pick it green and let it sit on the counter, the flavor reverts to an ordinary, slightly bland tomato.
It’s only a “sweet tooth” if you let it ripen completely on the bush. Even if you pick it just slightly early and let it ripen on the counter, the flavor just becomes ordinary and tomatoey. It is a heavier yielder outdoors in open ground than it is in the greenhouse. Overall, it’s not a bad variety, but Green Giant tastes way better to me. Outdoors the height was about 3.3 feet (1 m), and in the greenhouse, it hit 5 feet (1.5 m). It sets trusses of 5 fruits, forming a new truss every 2 leaves.
Green Sweet Tooth was the absolute best-tasting green tomato I have ever tried. The variety is a very heavy yielder and looks beautiful. Grew it outdoors in the dirt. Height was about 4 to 4.3 feet (1.2-1.3 m). I pruned it to two stems. The fruits were large, meaty, juicy, and incredibly sweet 😋. Evgeny from Tallinn sent me the seeds 🙏 🙏 🙏.
Seeds were from Valera 1968. Thank you, Valery! Planted it out in late April in open ground under Agrotex (floating row cover) into cold soil. It survived a frost around May 9th right under that same cover, and it turned out to be one of my earliest to ripen. Medium-sized, beautiful little tomatoes. The bush isn’t tall, about 3.3 to 3.6 feet (1-1.1 m), and it stays well-behaved without aggressively vining sideways. It hasn’t caught a single disease up to this day, even though the second half of summer here in the Urals has been record-breaking heat, and Blossom End Rot is running rampant.
As for the taste, how do I put this accurately… at first, it seemed sweet, but almost a bit cloying for my taste. But here’s the thing. Once, I tried growing those Chinese zucchinis – the kind where you can slice half off while it’s still hanging on the vine, and it just heals and keeps growing. I cut it once, tasted it, and didn’t want anything to do with it ever again, even though the taste was just “ordinary.”
But Sweet Tooth is the exact opposite. It’s unforgettable. It just draws you in, makes salads look gorgeous, and elevates the flavor… just thinking about it right now makes my mouth water! What does this tomato have that the others don’t? My kids loved it too – it’s an absolute battle over the salad bowl to see who can stab it with their fork fastest!
I grew 2 bushes – one in the greenhouse and one outdoors. The height was exactly the same, about 5.2 feet (1.6 m). The size of the tomatoes didn’t differ either. And the weirdest part – they started ripening in the dirt and in the greenhouse at the exact same time 😄 A good, sweet tomato and a heavy yielder.
Out of all the green varieties I grow (MSh, Swamp/Boloto, Green Giant, Kiwi, Amber Room, and others I can’t recall right now), Sweet Tooth is the heaviest yielder. Taste-wise this year, it matches Malakhitka perfectly. Amber Room turned out tastier for me, the flavor profile is richer and leans heavily towards pure sweetness.
