Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zone 3 Experience)
Indeterminate mid-season slicer variety. The vine is not as scrawny as most oxheart varieties tend to be, has pretty normal habit.
Fruit are large pink hearts, dense, and juicy. The flavor evolved through the season, starting out as standard tomato flavor and finishing as a very rich, sweet, delicious tomato. High-yielding variety, grew it in the greenhouse, and it was among the very first to start ripening.
Did get some yellow shoulders on some fruit, which tells me this variety is a heavy feeder that demands extra potassium while sizing up.
This was my top find of the entire season! One of the earliest ripening oxheart varieties under plastic.
The bottom trusses load up crazy heavy. Once you pick the first ripe fruit off those bottom clusters, the plant quickly channels energy into sizing up the upper clusters. That fast turnaround is a huge asset for pulling a great harvest out of our short northern summers.
Fruit run from medium to genuinely large hearts. Just like Elena mentioned above, if you skimp on fertilizer while the fruit are rapidly bulking up, you can get yellow shoulders on that first cluster. I did not see any yellow shoulders further up the vine, though.
Flavor is respectable with noticeable sweetness, and the flesh is very juicy. If you are an oxheart fan, this is an easy recommendation 😋
Seeds came from Valeriy1968, huge shoutout to him!
The vine is compact and polite, fairly slender in my garden, so it took up very little bed space. During our cold, soggy 2020 summer, it was still one of the earliest to color up.
The hearts are gorgeous, smooth, and nicely elongated. Flavor is mild, sweet, and delicate. Pure meat with hardly any seeds inside.
An absolute keeper on my planting list for next year. Honestly beat out both Lucile Tillson and Yaponka in my garden, came out noticeably sweeter and tastier for me!
Full Summary: Earliness, Yield, Taste & Fertilizer Needs
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate vine with a polite, upright footprint. While it carries typical heart-family characteristics, multiple growers note the foliage is sturdier and less fragile than notoriously wispy oxhearts, making it easier to manage in tight greenhouse spacing.
- ⏱️ Earliness: Exceptionally fast for a large-fruited oxheart. In cold, short-season climates (USDA Zone 3), it consistently ripens among the very first indeterminate varieties in protected hoop houses.
- 🍅 Fruit & Yield: Heavy early set. Produces medium to large elongated pink hearts weighing roughly 8-16 oz (225-450 g). Once lower trusses are harvested, the vine rapidly directs energy into swelling the next trusses up the string. Interior is dense, meaty, and nearly seedless.
- 👅 Taste Profile: Sweet, mellow, and juicy. Flavor deepens as summer sunshine increases, with high marks for sweetness and texture in blind comparisons against other pink hearts.
- 🧪 Fertilizer & Shoulders: Rapid fruit swell puts heavy demand on soil nutrients. Without sufficient potassium supplementation during initial fruit load, bottom fruit can develop hard yellow shoulders. Upper trusses ripen evenly once initial fruit strain is relieved.
- 🌎 Grower Climate: Thoroughly proven in short, harsh northern climates (Kostroma, Vologda, and Arkhangelsk regions of Northern Russia, USDA Zones 3a-4a).
Ludmilla’s Pink Heart has a rich heritage. It is a family heirloom originally brought from Kazakhstan to Germany by an ethnic German immigrant named Ludmilla. It was preserved and introduced to the international tomato community by renowned German seed saver Reinhard Kraft, who shared it with North American growers via Seed Savers Exchange around 2005.
lfate of potash) as soon as marble-sized fruit appear will eliminate the problem on early sets.
