📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Joe’s Pink Oxheart
- 🌍 Origin: A highly sought-after heirloom from the Ozark Mountains, USA. Popularized and distributed by the well-known American collector Dale Thurber (Delectation of Tomatoes).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. Vigorous, healthy vines with the classic “wispy” regular foliage common to many oxheart types. An early-to-mid season producer (around 75 days).
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Massive, slightly ribbed, broad pink oxhearts. They frequently reach 2 lbs (900g) and can easily exceed 2.2 lbs (1 kg) under good conditions.
- 👅 Flavor & Texture: Solid tomato meat! Very few seeds and almost no excess juice. The flavor is renowned for being exceptionally well-balanced, intensely sweet with a slight tartness, and highly aromatic.
Vigorous, sturdy vine. The fruits are enormous oxhearts weighing up to 2.2 lbs (1 kg) and more, raspberry-pink, very few seeds, meaty, extremely tasty, sweet, and aromatic.
A variety from Dale Thurber’s collection. Here is Dale’s description:
An heirloom variety from the Ozark Mountains. Indeterminate healthy plant with regular, wispy foliage, decent, fairly early yield from 75 days. Fruits are large with a 2 lb potential, clear pink color, slightly ribbed, in the shape of a broad heart. The flavor is excellent, well-balanced, very sweet with a little tartness, juicy and truly delicious. Rave reviews regarding yield and flavor from everyone who has grown it.
Just solid tomato meat, the flavor is excellent!!!
A large, productive, delicious variety. Pumping out absolute jumbos from the bottom all the way to the top of the plant. I grew it in a greenhouse.
Indeterminate, mid-season slicer variety. The fruits are large, slightly ribbed pink oxhearts, meaty, dense, with very few seeds. The flavor is very good, with a nice sweetness, but I kind of wished it was a little richer. The skin isn’t thick. Yield is above average, grew it in a greenhouse, in a shaded spot.
Did you catch Elena’s comment at the end? She noted that while her tomatoes were good, she wished the flavor was a bit richer, and then mentioned she grew them in a shaded spot.
This is a classic tomato-growing lesson! No matter how legendary an heirloom’s genetics are, a tomato plant acts like a solar panel. It requires intense, direct sunlight (at least 6-8 hours daily) to synthesize carbohydrates and build complex sugars. When large beefsteaks or oxhearts are grown in heavy shade or during prolonged cloudy weather, the fruits will often look beautiful but taste noticeably “watered down” or muted. Give Joe’s Pink Oxheart full sun, and it will reward you with that mind-blowing flavor everyone raves about!
