Quick Summary of Robs
- 🌍 Origin: A fantastic commercial Russian variety originally distributed by the “Elkom” seed company. Fun fact about the name: Growers eventually figured out that it isn’t named after a guy named Rob! “ROBS” is actually an acronym for ROzovoye Byche Serdse (Pink Oxheart).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), reaching over 2 meters (6.5 ft) in the greenhouse. The seedlings can sometimes be fussy, slow to germinate, and look spindly/fragile, but they explode with vigor once planted out.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large, beautiful pink oxhearts. They are incredibly meaty, dense, and contain very few seeds. Average weight is around 350-450g (12-16 oz), but they can easily grow larger.
- 👅 Flavor & Texture: Highly praised as a top-tier slicing/salad tomato. The flesh has a beautiful “sugary” sparkling texture when cut. Sweet, rich, and delicious.
- 📦 Storage: Despite being a large, meaty pink oxheart, it has surprisingly good shelf life and stores quite well after picking.
Lana wrote:
Svetlanka, whose seeds were they?
Added it to the first post 😊
According to Elkom’s description: “Beautiful heart-shaped fruits, ribbed, of an amazing raspberry-yellow-orange color, very small seed cavities.”
In reality, the pink color predominates.
Svetikk wrote:
In reality, the pink color predominates.
Mine grew outdoors in open ground. It was completely pink, didn’t look like a bicolor at all. A good variety. But it’s probably better suited for growing in a greenhouse. It wasn’t very productive outdoors. But the taste is very good. Seeds were from Tamarochka. 😊💖
Indeterminate, height up to 1.8m (6 ft), fruits are very beautiful and very tasty. Yield was below average, but it took a very long time to germinate and didn’t reach its full potential. I will definitely repeat it.
I am tormented by vague doubts 😳 It seems to me that my Robs does not look like Sveta’s. My unripe fruits had a yellowish tint and slight fuzz/pubescence 😕
Robs grew in the greenhouse and turned out to be very productive. The bushes are tall, over 2 meters (6.5 ft). The fruits are large, heart-shaped, of excellent taste, sweet.



Could you tell me if it was originally from Elkom seeds, and how is its shelf life?
Lyubov Alexandrovna wrote:
Could you tell me if it was originally from Elkom seeds, and how is its shelf life?
Yes, from Elkom seeds. It stores well, the fruits are quite firm.
I planted it 2 years in a row, and this year it grew as a volunteer plant (from self-sown seed) and, unnoticed by me, set fruit and yielded heavily (even though I only left it two trusses, but oh, what trusses they were!).
Copying from my 2020 report:
Repeating it from last year. By autumn of the second year, it finally dawned on me that ROBS is an acronym for ROzovoye Byche Serdse (Pink Oxheart).
I praised it highly and gave seeds to many people, but people aren’t praising it back. I suspect they didn’t like it. Let me start from the beginning. My seeds took a very long time to germinate. VERY long. More than two weeks. And if it was fussy as a seedling last year, this year by the time of transplanting it was so spindly you just wanted to “hug it and cry”. But I couldn’t just throw it away… I shoved it in a corner, deciding I just wanted to refresh the seeds (maybe I messed up the seed-saving technology last year?), so I left it with one stem, one truss…
As a result, there were 4 trusses, and the first truss was so heavy I was afraid it would snap the support string. (The others were slightly smaller, but also very good.) I had to put a little stool under them, and they ripened like that. I won’t lie, there were no kilogram (2.2 lbs) ones, I didn’t have any kilogram tomatoes at all this year. But still. The taste is good. Sweet. Like all pink oxhearts 😄


ROBS (Pink Oxheart) – indeterminate.
For lovers of classic pink oxhearts. The hearts are large, sugary/sparkling on the cross-section. Fruits are large, 350+ grams (12+ oz). Very beautiful and tasty. A slicing/salad variety.



