Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zones 3-5 Experience)
Seeds from Sibirskiy Sad. 100% germination rate. Delicious like pretty much all oxhearts 😋, super meaty and beautiful. Yield came in well above average. Grew it outdoors in the dirt with almost no pruning or shaping.
Fruits were sizable across the board, didn’t get any runts at all. Didn’t get any massive monsters either, though. The smallest fruit weighed 6.3 oz (180 g), and the biggest one tapped out at 17 oz (480 g). Saved seeds from a nice medium-sized heart off the second truss. After scooping out the seed pulp, my husband devoured the rest of the tomato with huge delight 😄.
Grew Eagle’s Heart back in 2012, but the yield was pretty disappointing for me. Produced about half of what Eagle’s Beak cranked out.
Not in my patch! Mine was absolutely loaded 🌾
Grew Eagle’s Heart under cover in the greenhouse using seeds from a Ukrainian collector. Moderate vigor vine with sparse, open foliage, very productive. Can easily be trained to 2-3 stems, just make sure to support each heavy fruit truss.
The fruits are large heart shapes in a delicate soft-pink shade. The flesh is dense, firm, and has a very enjoyable flavor profile. Top-tier variety for fresh salads and homemade tomato juice.
Eagle’s Heart. Started seed a bit late and germination was sluggish. Once it hit the greenhouse dirt, though, the seedling took right off and was actually one of the very first plants to start ripening fruit.
Overall, the vine threw out tons of suckers with very little fruit to show for it. I really wanted better yield, but the plant dropped blossoms like crazy. The fruits were way smaller than Cardinal, basically cocktail-sized. The color is a soft pink-raspberry and the heart shape is tidy. Taste is very pleasant, but I haven’t made up my mind yet whether I’ll give it another slot next season.
Easily in the top five pink varieties across my entire collection. Superb flavor. Grew it outdoors in partial shade. Seeds from Sibirskiy Sad.
Mirabelle: The fruits were way smaller than Cardinal, basically cocktail-sized…
Well, you definitely did not have Eagle’s Heart if your fruit was cocktail-sized! 😮 True Eagle’s Heart puts out hefty, beefy hearts, just as big as Cardinal. Sounds like you had a seed mix-up.
Hey folks. Just picked up some Eagle’s Heart seeds from Sibirskiy Sad. The back of the packet says you should only put 1-2 plants per square meter (approx. 10 sq ft). Does this vine really get that massive and wide? I am used to squeezing 4 plants per square meter and running them as single stems. Will that not fly with Eagle’s Heart?
The green shoulders on mine only went away when the fruit was completely overripe, might have been grower error on my end, though.
Awesome variety! 👍 Turned out super productive and delicious!
This was the very first tomato I ever grew from seed, picked up the packet at a garden expo. 100% germination, yield went right through the roof, taste was fantastic, zero disease issues. Handled open ground outdoors like a champ.
Slender plant, sparse leaf canopy. During a rainy summer, the big ones split. The lower ones looked exactly like the picture on the Sibirskiy Sad packet, while the upper clusters looked more like classic pointy hearts. Flavor was a solid 4 out of 5.
Ran it again in 2021 from that same seed packet. Kicking myself for only planting a single vine, it was gorgeous. Threw very few suckers, gave me 4 clusters with 3-4 fruits each, and stayed clean with zero disease.
Full Summary: Plant, Yield, Taste and Growing Quirks
- 🌿 Growth Habit: Mid-height to tall indeterminate vine (5-6 ft / 1.5-1.8 m) originating from Siberian breeder Sibirskiy Sad. Features classic sparse, delicate oxheart foliage that allows light to penetrate directly through the plant. Adapts well to outdoors as well as unheated poly tunnels.
- 📈 Yield & Training: Consistently delivers medium-to-high yields when pruned to 2-3 leaders. Clusters usually carry 3 to 5 sizable fruits. Due to heavy cluster weight, individual trusses frequently require soft support ties to prevent snapping.
- 👅 Taste & Texture: Signature sweet oxheart profile: dense, tender, meaty flesh with minimal juice, low acid, and almost no seed cavities. Multiple growers highlight it as a top-five pink variety in their heirloom rotations.
- ⚠️ Known Quirks: Can display yellow or green shoulders under heat stress or potassium deficits. Like many thin-skinned oxhearts, heavy late-summer rain can cause shoulder cracks if soil moisture fluctuates sharply. True genetics produce large 6-17 oz (180-480 g) hearts; any cherry or cocktail-sized fruit indicates a commercial seed mix-up.
- 🌎 Region Tested: Evaluated in diverse and demanding Russian zones, from brutal sub-boreal regions (Irkutsk, Kemerovo, Perm – USDA Zones 2b-3b) to temperate continental zones (Yaroslavl, Saratov – USDA Zones 4-5).
