📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Cardio
- 🌍 Origin: An Italian heirloom variety popularized by V. Redko. The name “Cardio” perfectly matches its classic, broad anatomical heart shape.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall). Reaches about 6 to 6.5 feet (1.8-2 m) in a greenhouse but adapts excellently to open ground. Known for its fantastic fruit set, rarely dropping blossoms.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Medium to large, dense, raspberry-pink oxhearts. Some fruits on the same plant can occasionally be oblate (flattened). Growers note a stunning, almost pearlescent glow to the skin.
- 👅 Flavor: Delicious and sweet, sometimes with a perfect touch of acidity. Highly rated for being an early-season tomato, a time when most early varieties taste quite bland.
⬇️ Read the reviews below to see why growers are making this pearlescent pink beauty a permanent resident on their grow lists!
An Italian variety. Seeds from V. Redko. It’s a mid-early, indeterminate variety, growing up to 6 feet (1.8 m). The yield and fruit set are extremely good. Fruits are medium to large, broadly heart-shaped, raspberry-pink, dense, and delicious.
Very good! Grew outdoors in open ground in 2014. Definitely a candidate for my 2015 grow list.
A very heavy yielder and a gorgeous variety. It topped 6.5 feet (2 m) in the greenhouse. I actually had both oblate and heart-shaped fruits on the exact same plant. Excellent flavor, sweet, sometimes with a nice little tangy kick.
Cardio. It ended up being my absolute earliest variety in 2020. A heavy-yielding, delicious tomato.
A huge thank you to Lyudochka @Ludmila D. for the seeds! 🙏
I also really loved the Cardio variety. Such neat, perfectly sized hearts. And yes, it’s a heavy yielder. It didn’t turn out super early for me (I planted the seedlings out in that greenhouse pretty late) but it definitely wasn’t late either.
It was my earliest indet too. So beautiful, the pink skin has this amazing pearlescent glow to it. And a very worthy flavor for such an early tomato.
User Ilya mentioned seeing both oblate (flattened/beefsteak) and heart-shaped tomatoes on the exact same plant. This is extremely common with heirloom oxheart varieties! The very first fruits on the bottom trusses—especially if they develop from early, fused megablooms—often grow wide and oblate. As the plant gets taller and the weather warms up, the fruits on the middle and upper trusses will display that classic, pointy “Cardio” heart shape.
