Cuor di Bue / Bull’s Heart Tomato: Yield, Taste & Grower Info

Here are my Bull’s Hearts, I really liked this variety, super meaty and productive 😋😋😋

Only the shape differs a bit, but I know there are several strains floating around out there. Mine is the French one (Coeur de Boeuf) 😄😄😄

Edited November 24, 2013 by Mila

Oh wow Mila, double the joy for you! 😄😄.

Bull’s Heart, we’ve had this one in the family for over 20 years. The vines get about 3.6-4.2 ft (1.1-1.3 m) tall. I prune them to a single leader. The seedlings look pretty frail and wispy at first, but they bulk up fast once planted out. They don’t put out a ton of suckers, but the fruit clusters get huge and need heavy-duty support. Flavor-wise, they are hands-down the best I’ve ever eaten. Super aromatic with a perfect balance of sweet and acid. They’re actually best when you let them get slightly overripe.

Edited February 22, 2015 by Drosera

Are “Heart of a Bull” (Serdtse Byka) and “Bull’s Heart” (Bychye Serdtse) different varieties?

Angelina, can you grow them to two stems?

I planted Bull’s Heart outdoors, pruned them to 3 stems, and give the flavor a 5+ rating. It’s a bummer that late blight hit us so early, though. Next year I’m definitely putting at least 4 of these in the greenhouse. I also ordered “Heart of a Bull” from Redko, I wonder if the taste is exactly the same?

Quote by Alexandra54:

Angelina, can you grow them to two stems?

You can, but the fruit size will be smaller.

Cuor di Bue, my seeds were originally from Novosibirsk, sent to me as an “improved” strain with increased yield.
Grew 1 plant in the greenhouse. It’s a shorter indet with that classic “wispy/weeping” habit 😄. It set 8 even, beautiful pink heart-shaped fruits. Very tasty, the variety is pretty similar to Rozoviy Myod (Pink Honey). Weights were hitting 300-400g (10-14 oz).
My friend grew it outdoors and it was a heavy yielder for her, she couldn’t praise it enough 🙂

My packet was labeled “Early Bull’s Heart”. It ripened right alongside all the rest of my main crops, so I guess my strain is just the regular Bull’s Heart after all.

Seeds from V. Redko. Pruned to two main stems. Both the yield and the flavor were just average for me.

The seeds were gifted to me, originally from a commercial packet.

Indeterminate, but the plant stays pretty tidy. It doesn’t sprawl out too wide or shoot up too fast (not leggy). Mid-season. Fruit weight up to 500 g (1.1 lbs).

I don’t have photos of the ripe ones, I just forgot to label them, and I honestly can’t tell them apart from my other pink-fruited hearts 😳

Please, someone add some photos of ripe ones. Tan (Tomatanya), I’m counting on you 🤐 drop a photo.

Here you go! 🙂

Edited February 13, 2014 by Tomatanya

[ADMIN NOTE] I merged the threads for Bychye Serdtse (Bull’s Heart) and Cuor di Bue into one topic, because they are exactly the same thing genetically.

Last summer, someone gave me a huge grocery bag full of tomatoes (I had almost none of my own ripening yet, as it was only the end of June). Some of them were absolute units, around 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs) 😳. It was Cuor di Bue. An 87-year-old grandma gave them to me; she’s been growing this same line for over 25 years, saving her own seed every season. Of course, I saved seeds from them immediately. 😛

Quote by anasst2010:

Some were about 1.5 kg… An 87-year-old grandma gave them to me… I saved the seeds.

Nastya, you have to grow those out this year and report back! If they really get that huge 😳, I’m calling dibs on seeds first! 😄

Deal, I’ll definitely try! 😉 And I’ll spy on how the grandma grows them too 😶‍🌫️, I’ll be helping her out in the garden this summer anyway.

Mid-season, fruits take forever to ripen on the vine, the real sign of ripeness is a deep, rich red color. Indeterminate, it has a very wispy/weeping habit with skinny foliage. The tomatoes are large, oval-pear-shaped, ribbed at the shoulders, bright red, averaging 250-400g (9-14 oz). Very meaty, sweet. Barely any liquid/gel. Very few seeds. Stores well on the counter for quite a while. Highly productive.

I’ll add some info collected from the internet about this specific strain:
Imported from France. Differs from the Buffalo Heart that is common in Russia. Very expensive on the market and a rare variety! High-yielding. These are incredibly aromatic and juicy tomatoes. Indoors in a high tunnel, fruits can be picked right up until the end of October. Great balance of meat and juice, excellent variety for fresh eating, cooking, and canning. Wonderful balanced flavor. To really make the flavor pop, just add a pinch of salt and a drizzle of olive oil.

Larisa, shape-wise, we have the exact same fruits 👍👍 In your photo, I also see that yours didn’t set the entire blossom cluster either 😳😳😳

I’m planting it again next season to observe. This summer I blame the fact that I planted the seedlings out too early, they got stunted by a late frost, and I planted the Corazons two-to-a-hole (double planted).

Bull’s Heart from Olya in Voronezh (an old preserved family heirloom).
I grew this strain in 2012 and 2013.
The plants get tall with very sparse, wispy foliage. Fruits weigh anywhere from 250-550g (9-19 oz). Super sweet. Takes a bit longer to ripen than Pink Honey (Rozoviy Myod). Very heavy yielder.

In 2012 I grew it outdoors in the dirt. The plant got massive, was absolutely loaded with fruit, and ended up collapsing 😄 (I didn’t have a good enough stake for it). The seedlings always looked incredibly leggy and scrawny, both in 2012 and 2013.

In 2013 it grew in the greenhouse. 👍

Edited November 27, 2014 by Ovechka

Quote by Larek:

…Stores well on the counter for quite a while…

I have seeds of this tomato from T. Yashchenko. Good variety, productive, meaty and tasty. But I definitely wouldn’t call it a good keeper tomato. Probably just another weird translation issue on the seed packet.

Edited January 7, 2015 by Drosera

Such a classic heirloom, everyone in our area grows it. We really love the taste, especially the pink and orange mutations.

I have Bull’s Heart from the Aelita seed company.
From one packet, I ended up with two different strains growing out. Both are huge hearts, but one plant produced red ones and the other is pink.
Judging by the description on the back, the correct tomatoes should be red, but I absolutely loved the pink off-type/stray too.

And these are the pink ones:

Unfortunately, my old camera doesn’t want to capture the difference in color, but believe me, it’s there and very obvious in person. I’ll try to take some pictures outside, maybe the color rendering will be better in natural light.

I grew this variety this year from Larisa (Larek), for which I owe her a huge thanks. I really loved this one. Tasty, meaty, moderately sweet–although I think due to all the overcast weather we had, it probably didn’t reach its full potential. Still, it set a ton of fruit both in the greenhouse and out in the dirt. The tomatoes get huge, so a lot of the clusters had to be supported with extra ties so they wouldn’t snap. Definitely growing this one again next season.

Seeds: Cuor di bue (Italian Bull’s Heart), grown from Czech seed stock. It grew into a slender vine up to 5-5.5 ft (1.5-1.7m) in the greenhouse. Fruits are a beautiful pink-raspberry color, tapering down to a perfect point, weighing up to 200g (7 oz). Beautiful shape, delicate, refined sweet taste, dense/meaty flesh, thick walls up to 5mm.

Bull Heart from Makedonia – Czech seeds. Medium-tall vines, mid-late season. The fruits have a gorgeous heart shape, delicate pink color, and sugary, delicious flesh.

Tomato “Cuor di Bue”, France (Bull’s Heart red) from Rossortsemovosh seed company. Every single one was large, dense, and tasty. Very productive variety.

Bull’s Heart from “Selektsiya” company: on the front of the packet it literally said “Best varieties and hybrids,” and advertised 800-gram monsters twice. Never happened. They were all in the puny 100-150 gram range (3.5-5.3 oz). When I took the photo there were 8 fruits, and a couple more set later. The flavor was excellent, to be fair. But a total rip-off otherwise. That’s the plant on the left. It also ripened way later than the next strain. Plant on the right.

Bull’s Heart from Aelita company. Photo taken on the exact same day as the previously described variety. It had 44 fruits on it! Even more set later-great for fresh eating and processing. 5 ft (1.5 meter) vines, absolutely loved everything about it.

All those tomatoes came from a single plant; on the left is the bottom sucker.

The differences between the regional strains are minimal – both are incredibly tasty, sweet, and meaty. I honestly wouldn’t be able to tell them apart by taste blindfolded.. Both have earned a permanent annual spot in my high tunnels.. 👍

Edited November 26, 2015 by Drosera

I just can’t get “Cuor di Bue” to work for me, neither the red nor the black ones…. Maybe I’m doing something wrong — I get two, maybe three large tomatoes per vine, and that’s it….

Grew Bull’s Heart from Portuguese seeds. Very productive variety, indet, pruned to 2 stems in the greenhouse, and it pumped out tons of pink hearts up to 10.5 oz (300g) all the way to the top of the vine 😳👍 The flavor was okay, just lacked a bit of sweetness, so it’s probably best as a sauce/canning tomato.

Grew the variety Cuor di Bue in 2015 from seeds I actually bought over in Italy:

Sowed on February 9, grew out in the open dirt, and the first harvest ripened on June 24. It actually ended up being the earliest of all my tomatoes.
The tomatoes, just like Svetikk’s, threw all sorts of different shapes and sizes, pink in color.

The vines get tall, around 6 ft (1.8m). I really loved the flavor, it had that classic sweetness. We sliced the large ones up for salads, and I used the smaller ones for pickling/marinating. They didn’t split when I canned them whole, even though the skins are pretty thin. They are prone to sunscald in intense summer heat, though, so they definitely benefit from some shade cloth.

Edited January 15, 2016 by LiliyaYa

Photo of the seed packet:

Description on back:
A unique salad variety.
Popular mid-season variety for open ground and film greenhouses. Period from sprouting to the beginning of ripening 118-120 days. Plant height up to 150 cm (5 ft), requires staking, forms 4-5 trusses on the main stem with 2-5 fruits each. Fruits are pink, heart-shaped, weighing 110-225 g (4-8 oz). Excellent taste. Salad variety, recommended for fresh consumption.

My photos:

Started producing by day 97, extremely heavy yielder. There were about 50 seeds in the pack. The fruits on different vines grew into somewhat different shapes and colors. But all are large-fruited. The red-colored and round-shaped ones are a bit sour. The “Budenovka” shaped ones with pink flesh are incredibly tasty and sweet. Now, on day 106, I’m pulling 2-3 kg (4.4-6.6 lbs) of ripe fruit a day. I will definitely be saving seeds from the pink “Budenovka” shapes, I really loved them. As for the downsides — it gets yellow shoulders on almost every tomato (doesn’t bother me much, but my friend absolutely hates it). The second issue is blossom drop in the peak summer heat. Next time I’ll start the seeds earlier so they can set more fruit before the real heat hits.

The first ripe heart this year.
Seeds from Yaroslavna.

German Bull’s Heart, seeds from Valichka

And here is how it went for me! At one of the Moscow seed swaps I scored some seeds from Portugal, Coracao de Boi (from Mikhail-Mishel – thank you hooooge amounts!). Sowed 2 seeds, grew 2 plants — completely different. One plant was super skinny/wispy, the other was a sprawling monster… one was absolutely loaded with raspberry-colored hearts, the other only gave me a handful of red ones… The raspberry ones seemed tastier, yielded way better, and the plant was more compact….. I saved seeds from both! But I’m definitely bringing the raspberry strain back next year — good hearts! Thanks again to Mikhail! 🎩 (In the photo, raspberry on the left, red on the right, in the foreground — Vater Rhein 😶‍🌫️!)

I had seeds from Natasha-Yaroslavna and Angelina. When transplanting into the greenhouse, I mixed up my labels and forgot whose was whose. Pruned them to a single leader. The vine is just way too frail to support fruit of that size. The first blossom cluster only gave me one huge tomato, and the second cluster gave me two medium ones. Yes, the flavor is out of this world, but they were a total bust for me yield-wise.

But if I let them grow to two or three main stems, do you think the yield will go up? They are just painfully tasty. When I tried them, I immediately remembered my grandmother and the village, total childhood nostalgia. I will plant them again.

Grew it again this season — it didn’t let me down 👍

Quote by Lvovna:

And here is how it went for me!… I saved seeds from both! But I’m definitely bringing the raspberry strain back next year — good hearts!

Anya, and what kind will I get from your seeds — heart-shaped or round (thanks again for the gift 😘)? And how tall do the vines get?

This variety is permanently in my “Sowed, sow, and will always sow” category. I just love its excellent taste (a constant and extremely stable trait for this variety), its early-mid ripening window — it’s usually the second variety to ripen for me — excellent yield, and the vines are actually pretty sturdy (not wispy).

Edited November 23, 2018 by Nata N.

Bull’s Heart. Seeds from Alena.

Description:
Tomato Coeur de Boeuf Jerusalem (Bull’s Heart, Jerusalem), Israel – indeterminate, mid-season variety. Tomatoes are heart-shaped, slightly ribbed/fluted, pinkish-red, weighing 180-300 g (6-10 oz) and up to 500 g (1.1 lbs). Dense, raspberry-colored meaty flesh, practically seedless inside. Rich flavor profile heavily leaning towards sweet. Very productive variety, fruits have a great shelf life and can be stored for a long time after harvest.

I liked this strain very much. Completely matches the description. It’s early and a heavy yielder. The fruits are meaty and super sweet. Average fruit weight was 250-300 g (9-10.5 oz). Very few seeds.