📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Copia
- 🌍 Origin: A stunning American heirloom developed by breeder Jeff Dawson. It is a cross between ‘Marvel Stripe’ and ‘Green Zebra’. It was named in honor of Copia, the American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts in Napa, California. It is sometimes sold under the name “Tigercopia”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate, Regular Leaf (RL). A vigorous but generally manageable plant (often reaching about 1.5m / 5ft). Suitable for both open ground and greenhouse growing.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Gorgeous bicolor beefsteaks. The skin is a striking mix of fine golden yellow and red stripes, and the interior flesh is beautifully marbled with yellow and ruby red. Average weight is around 200g – 350g (7-12 oz).
- 👅 Flavor: Sweet and fruity, a classic rich bicolor flavor profile. Known to be quite juicy.
- ⏳ Maturity: Mid-late season.
Copia – indeterminate, regular leaf, a very beautiful bicolor. Mid-late season, sweet-fruity flavor, average weight 200g (7 oz).
Irina, how is the yield of this variety?
Quote from Semechka:
Irina, how is the yield of this variety?
Ever since I joined this forum, I find it hard to answer this question. Many people put their own subjective meaning and standards into the term “high yield”. But I will speak based on my personal metrics: since the variety turned out to be mid-late for me, the yield was lower, you could say average—6 trusses, with 5-6 tomatoes on each, and some had to be ripened indoors off the vine. For me, “high yield” means 8-11 trusses. But I didn’t adapt it to my climate, I just planted it for a trial run because of its beauty.
I have seeds of this variety saved from 2013, I’ll try planting it next year. You’ve piqued my interest.
Quote from Semechka:
I have seeds of this variety saved from 2013, I’ll try planting it next year…
It’s worth growing at least once, if only for its beauty. In real life it looks stunning, and the taste is similar to most good bicolors. I pruned it to two stems, but I think it’s better to prune it to a single main stem to get an earlier harvest.
We had 5 bicolors this year, including 2 bushes of Copia—one in open ground and one under plastic. Both bushes were 1.5 meters (5 ft) tall, the main stems and fruit stems are strong and healthy. The largest fruits weighed 350g and 309g (12.3 oz and 10.9 oz). 2 out of the 5 bicolors (Copia being one of them) showed excellent yield.
Here is the bush in open ground on September 15th, all the ripe red-blushed fruits have already been harvested.
The cross-section shows that there is quite a lot of seed gel; because of this, the acidity level is slightly higher. This is the only thing that differentiates it from the “Mr. Stripey” (Striped Gentleman) variety.
In open ground, after the August rains, it started to develop dry radial cracking extending from the stem.
Quote from Rodebielesumer:
The cross-section shows that there is quite a lot of seed gel; because of this, the acidity level is slightly higher…
Is it just me, or does mine in the photo not look as watery? When I was buying bicolor seeds, I was told that when the fruit starts to ripen, you need to reduce watering, and if conditions allow, stop watering completely for a while, so as not to dilute the dry sugars in the fruits. And after picking, leave them on the counter for a day, or longer if possible, so the excess moisture evaporates—then the bicolor becomes much sweeter… That’s the secret trick.
Hi Alisa, advice like “stop watering plants after fruit set” is constantly given in Russia… It’s clear the people giving this advice are not talking about long-season indeterminate tomatoes; they probably don’t grow them. Copia is a long-season producer.
As for our summer here—we had extreme heat without a single drop of rain for 2.5 months. Ducks and chickens were walking on scorched earth, no grass grew. My husband collected water in the spring into every possible barrel and tank, based on the experience of a previous hot, dry summer. We don’t use house tap water for irrigation, it’s too expensive. We watered (roughly 1 liter / 1 quart per plant) only the tomatoes that were practically screaming for water, drooping their leaves and flower trusses. We were hoarding water for the cucumbers, otherwise they would have died completely. We did lose a portion of the harvest to blossom drop due to the heat and lack of water.
You can see in the photo that even the skin is soft, although it was just picked, and there’s a spreading sunscald on the other side. That’s how the intense heat affected the skin and outer flesh of this specific variety, while other varieties stayed firm with clearly defined sunscald spots. By the way, one of the parents of this variety, Green Zebra, also turned out to have a soft, mushy texture for us—I ended up throwing those over the fence to the chickens. But maybe I should try it again now, maybe it has adapted.
Girls, who else has grown this variety? We have quite a few growers here, please share your experience.
Quote from Rodebielesumer:
As for our summer here—we had extreme heat without a single drop of rain for 2.5 months…
We had the exact same heatwave this summer, but unlike you, I didn’t stock up on water over the winter and had to pay dearly for it. 1 liter would definitely not have been enough for mine; I ran the sprinkler over them for 15 minutes every single day after the peak heat, and only then did the leaves bounce back. My tomatoes were just as big of water hogs as the cucumbers.
Copia is better planted in the shade of other tall varieties so it doesn’t bake in the scorching sun, or you need to put up a shade cloth roof, which I didn’t get around to doing this year. Mine grew in the second row (i.e., on the western side), so it didn’t roast. But of course, I didn’t get a massive harvest like yours. So, I have something to strive for!
I want to add some info on Copia. It is also called “Tigercopia”. In Russian, it is sometimes found under the name “Copia Striped”.
The parents of Copia are Green Zebra and Marvel Stripe, which explains the striped exterior and the bicolor interior.
“Green Copia” is a completely different variety; it was discovered by Andrey Baranovski in Belarus in a packet of regular Copia seeds (the one with yellow-red stripes). Green Copia is now a stabilized line today, differing not only in color but also in taste. Though from time to time, there are reports that people grow Green Copia, but it turns out to be the regular yellow-red striped one.
I grew both Green and Striped Copia this year in the greenhouse. Striped unexpectedly turned out to be more productive with larger fruits. It’s not late-season (unlike Green Copia), and it’s a manageable indeterminate in terms of height, reaching around 1.5 meters (5 ft). Tastes like a solid, good bicolor; I didn’t catch any special nuances. And yes, we had heat and drought all summer too—watered every 3 days from a hose using pond water, otherwise everything would have burned to a crisp.
Quote from Alisa:
Copia – indeterminate, regular leaf, a very beautiful bicolor…
Yes, very beautiful and extremely tasty! 👍
I liked the variety—beautiful, tasty, and productive.
It grew in the greenhouse and didn’t suffer from massive blossom drop due to the heat. Maybe it dropped a few flowers, but in return, the fruits were larger, and there were quite a lot of them. It produced for a long time; when I finally pulled the plants at the end of the season, there were still a few tomatoes hanging on the bush.
Hello dear tomato lovers. I am looking for information on the “Dark Copia Heart” tomato. I assume it is from this same series, the Copia family? Someone sent me the seeds as a gift, but I can’t find any information or reviews about the variety. Here you describe the yellow and green ones… but nothing about the dark one. Could you tell me how it performs? Yield, disease resistance, Days to Maturity (DTM)? I have no one else to ask.
Quote from Grabelka:
I am looking for information on the “Dark Copia Heart” tomato.
Hello! Just type the phrase “Dark Copia Heart” into the search bar at the top of the forum. It should bring up about 2 pages of reviews and photos.
