Beauty Queen Heart Tomato Review & Photo

Seeds from V. Redko. First time growing this one. I have two plants growing outdoors in the dirt. Indeterminate, gets to about 5 feet (1.5 m), beautiful vigorous grower. The yield is decent, but the clusters only hold one to three fruits, mostly just 1-2. The fruits are beautiful orange-yellow hearts with stripes, weighing 3.5-10.5 oz (100-300 g).

I’m growing a lot of orange and yellow hearts this year, and flavor-wise, I liked this one the best. Mine had a really well-balanced flavor with good sweetness and dense, juicy flesh. The tomato in the photo is slightly underripe, but it was still delicious.

Finally, someone started a thread for this variety! My seeds are from Marianna (USA). First impressions:

Strong vine, currently pushing 6.5 feet (2 m) outdoors, but it’s humid here and growing in baking sun. Not disease prone, which is huge for my climate. I planted it outside pretty early for my area, on April 1st. The plant just waited for the heat to arrive and only then took off, but once it warmed up, it caught right up to the other varieties. I think it would prefer an early greenhouse planting. Regular leaf, beautiful foliage with a bit of fuzz and a frosty look, gorgeous!

The first truss just stalled out and sat there with tiny buds. After that, in my conditions, it consistently pushes out 3-4 flowers per cluster and sets 1-3 fruits, but mostly 2 per cluster. It doesn’t drop blossoms, but the little buds just refuse to size up. I just found out today that the Redko strain is highly productive with decent fruit weight. Mine are visually maxing out around 5.3 oz (150 g). At first, the fruits have green stripes, but as they ripen, they turn mostly yellow with light pink-red striping. My fruits look more like large plums than true hearts, although a few do have that rounded-heart shape. I’m waiting for them to fully ripen, so I’ll report back on the taste later.

So far I really love the plant itself, I just need to figure out the right fertilizer regime to bump up the number of fruits per cluster and overall yield. I played around with phosphorus, but haven’t found the magic ratio yet. After adding superphosphate, the flower count went up, but fruit set is still a struggle.

I pruned it to a single stem, but next year I plan to try running it to 2 stems, it definitely has the potential for it.

Alisa wrote:

I pruned it to a single stem, but next year I plan to try running it to 2 stems, it definitely has the potential for it.

This variety absolutely has potential. I am running both of my plants to 3 stems, and the fruits aren’t small, I’m getting mostly large ones. When planting, I added a pinch of superphosphate and potassium sulfate to the hole, hit it once with some tomato fert, and of course, I water frequently.

The ripening timeline really confused me. It flowered late and just sat there for the longest time. Then it just started setting fruit out of nowhere. You walk up to the plant – no fruit. I checked it like that several times. Then I walked up a while later, and it was completely loaded with fruit. It started ripening about a week ago. The photo is of the first ripe ones, but today I picked 11 fruits off the two plants, ate one right there in the garden, and it’s exactly my favorite kind of flavor. 😋

Sofia 27 wrote:

The ripening timeline really confused me. It flowered late and just sat there for the longest time. Then it just started setting fruit out of nowhere. You walk up to the plant—no fruit. I checked it like that several times. Then I walked up a while later, and it was completely loaded with fruit.

Thanks, taking notes! Mine was also the very last one to start flowering, and the first fruit only ripened today. I’m going to let it sit on the counter for a bit so I can save seeds, then I’ll report back on the taste in my garden. You could definitely classify this as a mid-late season variety.

A few more photos of the ripe queens.

Here is my Beauty Queen Heart. The tomatoes ranged from 6 to 12 oz (180 to 350 g). For the photo, I picked uniform ones at different stages of ripeness. Once the warm nights hit 57°F (14°C), the fruits got super sweet, like a really good bicolor should. The flavor fluctuated throughout the season: at first it leaned a bit tart, then perfectly balanced, then very sweet, and at the end of the season when the rains started, back to balanced. But it was never bland, even when ripened indoors.

It set fruit right up to the very end. But late in the season, with constant rain, downpours, high humidity, and sharp temp swings, the fruits started cracking. Massive root system. The plant itself is super healthy, no diseases. The only thing it absolutely requires is phosphorus fertilizer to bump up the flower count per cluster.

Sofia 27 wrote:

It flowered late and just sat there for the longest time. Then it just started setting fruit out of nowhere. You walk up to the plant – no fruit. I checked it like that several times. Then I walked up a while later, and it was completely loaded with fruit.

Found this thread thanks to the heads-up. Mine also set fruit totally under the radar, much later than the other varieties. I kept checking and checking, and then suddenly saw a bunch of little fruits. Mine were on the smaller side, no more than 3.5 oz (100 g), pruned to 3 stems. The flavor was balanced, not the sweetest.

Greenhouse. Pruned to 1 and 2 stems. Vigorous, sprawling vine. Thick stems, wide fuzzy leaves. A real looker. Responds well to feeding, but there’s a danger of fattening it up with too much nitrogen. Foliage density is ~70%. The width of a 1-stem plant is ~24 inches (60 cm). At first, it lacked potassium. Then the fruits started cracking near the stem – it looked like a boron deficiency, even though I did several foliar sprays with boric acid. Medium-sized fruits. The flavor is wonderful – light, airy, sweetish with a pleasant tang: 5 out of 5 stars. The most I got off a single plant was about 6.5 lbs (3 kg). 1-2 plants of this beauty are a permanent staple in my garden. Seeds from V. Redko.