📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Huge Lemon Oxheart
- 🌍 Origin: Known in Russia as “Bolshoye Limonnoye Serdtse” (Big Lemon Heart) or “Limonny Oxheart”. An outstanding yellow/pale heirloom variety.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. A very tall and vigorous plant that can easily exceed 8 ft (2.5m) in a greenhouse. Requires aggressive pruning (usually kept to 2 stems) to control its height.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Despite the “Oxheart” name, this variety throws a mix of shapes—some are blunt hearts, while others are large, flat-round beefsteaks. The color is pale lemon-yellow or creamy white, often with a beautiful pink blush on the blossom end and a pink streak through the meat inside. Fruits are massive, regularly hitting 14 oz to 1.3 lbs (400-600g).
- 👅 Flavor & Use: Highly debated! Some growers find the flavor delicately sweet, tender, and perfect for a mild diet. Others find it too bland for fresh eating unless dressed with salt and oil. It makes fantastic, mild yellow tomato sauce and juice.
- ⚠️ Grower’s Note: It can be a late starter. Also, the early blossoms are highly prone to fasciation (megablooms), resulting in catfaced or wonky first fruits.
Big Lemon Heart (Huge Lemon Oxheart).
Indet, grew in the greenhouse to 2 stems, seeds from @Hrizantema57 🙏
The fruits are very beautiful, yellow color up to 10.5 oz (300g). When sliced open, there’s sometimes a pink streak/blush inside. Tasty!
This variety is called Big Lemon Oxheart, or Lemon Oxheart, but the English word “Huge” is often used in its name for a reason—it’s not just big, it’s gigantic. The fruits are genuinely massive, reaching 14 oz to 1.3 lbs (400–600g) and more, and they barely shrink in size; they stay huge right up until the final harvest.
They are absolutely beautiful. Some are beefsteak-type (oblate), others are blunt hearts. Meaty; colored in a lemon or creamy-yellow hue, often with a small, faded pinkish blush on the blossom end. The flesh is light yellow with pink marbling in the center, very tender, extremely tasty, with a small amount of seeds. Mid-season, heavy yielder, reliable. Indet. A wonderful salad tomato, perfect for making juices and sauces.
Lemon Oxheart (my seeds are from Yaroslavna). It took first place for yield this year. Indeterminate, tall, mid-late. Everything else was already ripening, and this one was just starting to set fruit, but then it kicked into high gear and the fruits just pumped up like white balloons, getting bigger every day. The maters are lemon-yellow or whitish, all of them huge, no small ones at all. Meaty, oblate, not many seeds.
Grew it in the greenhouse to two stems, hit 8.2 ft (250 cm). To keep the height manageable in the future, I probably need to prune it to three stems. In my setup, to speed up fruit set and growth on the upper trusses, it’s best to pull the first truss at the breaker stage (blushing). Fruits were 14 oz to 1.3 lbs (400-600g). Tasty, delicate flavor. Huge thanks to Natalya Pavlovna!!!
more 😁 😁 😁
Edited January 29, 2015 by Drosera
Thank you, Marisha, for growing it with such care 👍 The variety really is a heavy yielder, super prolific, with massive lemon-yellow fruits… In my climate, it’s mid-season. I grow it in the greenhouse to 2 stems… Since I sow all my tall, large-fruited varieties in February, it gets a significant “head start” in plant development and fruit ripening… The fruits have a delicate, unique flavor, and weigh no less than 14 oz to 1.3 lbs (400-600g). 🙌 👍
Ladies, isn’t it supposed to be heart-shaped? Based on the name, I assumed it was an actual oxheart shape. 😳
Mine isn’t a heart either.
Mine were also large oblate beefsteaks, lemon-colored, tasty, and productive—seeds also from Natalya Pavlovna 🌺
Good variety, large, heavy yielder. The flavor is a bit bland on its own, but thrown into a salad with salt and oil it’s 😋 😋 😋
In 2014, this variety (seeds from V. Redko) was the absolute champion of megablooms and catfaced, wonky fruits in my garden. Taste was good, fruits were large oblate beefsteaks. Will repeat if I get the chance. I really want the beautiful perfect ones like Yaroslavna grew. I’ve been dreaming about them…
Grew it in the greenhouse to 2 stems. Beautiful, tasty tomatoes up to 14 oz (400g), with a nice pink blush inside 😋 Seedling was gifted to me by Lena-trofi at the Moscow meetup 🌺
Out in the dirt (open ground) it was mid-late for me. Large, pale-yellow fruits. Yield was average, and the taste seemed a bit bland to me.
Good variety, large, heavy yielder. For me, the taste had a nice little tang to it, I’d say the flavor was perfectly balanced. Grew in the greenhouse, pruned to 2 stems.
I got this variety from Kulik. The first batch of seedlings froze in the greenhouse. Resowed on April 16th. Growing it outside in the dirt. Good yield. Beautiful, light-lemon fruits. Delicious mater! Not bland at all.
For me, this variety had a terrible yield, and the flavor was just kinda… boring. Tried it—won’t be growing it again. Looks pretty nice from the outside, though.
Grew over 8.2 ft (2.5 meters) in the greenhouse, sturdy bush, late-season, heavy yielder, large fruits, beautiful. The flavor is delicate and mild, perfect for a gentle diet. Seeds from Angelina. Pruned to two stems.
Seeds were from Kulik, grew in the greenhouse. Tasty and productive, not a late ripener for me.
