📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Pineapple Heart (Ananasnoe Serdtse)
- 🌍 Origin: An unstable exotic selection created by the well-known breeder A.I. Kulik. It originated as a genetic segregation (off-type) of another variety, and growers are still actively stabilizing it.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), mid-early to mid-late season. Because the variety is still segregating, growers report plants with both Regular Leaf (RL) and Potato Leaf (PL) foliage. Currently, the RL version is considered more “correct”.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large, heart-shaped (or sometimes blunt-heart/oblate) fruits weighing 200-700g (7-25 oz). The color is highly unique: the most prized version is a “dark tricolor” (a mix of green, brown, and red), while another line is a classic yellow-pink bicolor.
- 👅 Flavor & Yield: Absolutely outstanding, complex, sweet, and spicy flavor profile. It is often described as a “fruit-tomato.” Yields vary depending on growing conditions but are generally good. Prone to hard shoulders if under-watered in extreme heat.
Pineapple Heart (Ananasnoe Serdtse). A breeding selection by A.I. Kulik. I received the seeds of this variety directly from A.I. Kulik in 2016. Alexey Ivanovich explained that it was a genetic segregation (an off-type) of one of his varieties and offered it to me to test out.
In 2016, out of three planted bushes, only one produced heart-shaped fruits. I really liked the taste, so I saved the seeds. In 2017, all the planted bushes had heart-shaped fruits, but on one bush they were more rounded-heart shaped. I saved seeds from the fruits that had a pronounced, sharp heart shape. This season, I planted three bushes, and all fruits had a perfect heart shape.
Indeterminate. Mid-early. Fruits are heart-shaped tricolors weighing from 200 to 700g (7 to 25 oz) (this season they were exceptionally large). Yield is good. The flavor varied over the three years, from average to very tasty. In the greenhouse, it developed hard shoulders and tasted a bit bland, but outdoors in open ground, especially towards the end of the season, it was incredibly sweet.
This breeding selection from Sofochka has become my absolute favorite. Under my conditions (grown outdoors in a container), the bush turned out compact and was one of the earliest to ripen. It didn’t drop any blossoms in the heat. It didn’t react negatively to moisture or sharp fluctuations in day/night temperatures, kept fruiting right up until the very end, and never got sick.
For my taste, the fruits were unbelievably delicious and actually stored quite well. During the peak of the heatwave, it caught a little bit of Blossom End Rot, but that was my fault—it needed regular watering. The smaller fruits were distinct hearts, while the larger ones looked like the photo below. All in all, this is my top discovery of 2018!
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Seeds were from Sofochka, and this is the handsome guy that grew.
Seeds from Lena Danko, grew in the greenhouse. I’m so glad I planted 2 bushes, it was so incredibly delicious we just ate them plain—not in salads, not for canning, we just devoured them straight…
What leaf type does this variety have? Both of my seedlings have Potato Leaf (PL).
Svet, my one bush had Regular Leaf (RL).
A most delicious fruit-tomato!!!
Pineapple Heart, seeds from Ninulya. Indeterminate, Regular Leaf (RL), fruits are large and rounded with a slight heart shape. Extremely beautiful when sliced open, and delicious!
Tasty and very productive!
Grown in a polycarbonate greenhouse. Mid-season. The taste is sweet, almost completely lacking acidity.
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Svetikk said:
What leaf type does this variety have? Both of my seedlings have Potato Leaf (PL).
Sveta @Svetikk, what ended up growing from your Potato Leaf (PL) seedlings? Mine all grew PL too. Now I don’t know what is actually growing and what the correct leaf type for this variety is supposed to be.
TatyanaSh said:
Sveta @Svetikk, what ended up growing from your Potato Leaf (PL) seedlings?…
Tanyush, I ripped out the PL ones last year and resowed seeds from a different source (from Ninulya)—they grew with Regular Leaf (RL), there’s a photo in my post above. I just read that for the majority of growers, this variety had RL.
Pineapple Heart segregated originally for Kulik, and now there are two versions going around—a bicolor heart (yellow-pink) and a tricolor (green-brown with red). I label my version as Black (or Dark) Pineapple Heart.
Apparently, it is still segregating by leaf type as well. I sowed it from my own saved seeds this year—the leaf is RL.
Svetikk said:
Pineapple Heart, seeds from Ninulya. Indeterminate, Regular Leaf (RL), fruits are large and rounded with a slight heart shape…
Dark Pineapple Heart. I repeated this wonderful variety, with Regular Leaf (RL). Grew in the greenhouse on 2 stems, yield was good, taste was excellent, fruits were large. Out of the tricolor hearts (like Taiga and True Colours which are PL), I like this one the best—it is more productive, although they are all incredibly delicious.
I really loved the variety. The taste of the fruits is complex, sweet-spicy. Yield is good. In general, dark multicolors are the most delicious tomatoes to me.
Thanks to Sveta @Lana_s_Kavkaza for the seeds.
My “Heart” grew with Potato Leaf (PL), and the fruits turned out flat-round, without a hint of a heart shape. The color was dark multicolor, and it was tasty. But it seems I got some sort of off-type (genetic segregation). I didn’t take any photos.
My Pineapple Heart is a mid-season ripener, closer to late-season. Grew in the greenhouse, the bush was compact. First time growing it. It wasn’t highly productive, but for that taste, I forgive it everything))
My seeds from Irina (tomat40) produced a distinct bicolor, purely two-colored.
