📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Red Butter Heart
- 🌍 Origin: Originally tracing back to the USA, this variety became incredibly popular in the Russian heirloom community after being distributed by collector V. Redko.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall/vine). Exhibits the classic “weeping oxheart” gene with thin, wispy, droopy foliage. Do not be alarmed—the plant is not dying, this is just how it looks! Usually reaches about 6.5 feet (2 m) in a greenhouse.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Massive, glossy red hearts. The skin is very shiny, almost as if rubbed with butter (hence the name). Fruits routinely reach 1.5 lbs (700 g), with pruned greenhouse plants pushing monster fruits up to 3.3 lbs (1.5 kg). Very meaty with almost no seeds.
- 👅 Flavor & Use: The flavor is mild, refreshing, and distinctly “tomatoey,” though some growers find it lacks intense sugary sweetness. Because it is so dense and dry, it is considered an elite processing tomato, making spectacular thick ketchup, sauces, and juices.
Seeds from V. Redko. “Red Butter Heart (USA) – Tall, thin leaves, fruits are massive red hearts weighing up to 3.3 lbs (1.5 kg), the flesh is very meaty with a small amount of seeds, very tasty.”
Mine grew in the greenhouse. Pruned it to 2 stems. The fruits are beautiful hearts, shiny, like they are coated in butter. It totally lives up to its name 🙂. It fruited right up until the frost. This is the very last one picked on October 1st, weighing 1 lb (461 g).
A very heavy yielder, requires excellent staking.
An absolute stunner! 🙂 👍
My Red Butter Heart. A good little tomato.
2015 Season:
This variety was a bust for me. Only a few good fruits fully ripened. To be fair, my seedlings were spindly and weak, so maybe I just had a bad batch of seeds.
Grew it outdoors in the dirt this year. It only produced 3 large fruits. It’s definitely a greenhouse variety for our climate. A very handsome plant, I love it. 😘 Haven’t taken pictures yet, it’s raining outside.
Hello! I am a newbie on this site. My name is Natalya.
Red Butter Heart made me very happy this year, seeds from Redko. Even though the summer was pretty bad, the tomato weights ranged from 1.5 to 3.1 lbs (700 to 1410 g). The bush is compact in terms of foliage but reached about 6.5 feet (2 m) tall. It could have kept going, but I topped it. Complex trusses, it set almost every truss without dropping blossoms, even when it got cold. Some fruits just didn’t have time to put on weight because the frosts hit, but those were up on the fourth trusses. The bushes were pruned to two and three stems. The only thing I didn’t like was that the seeds took forever to wake up and germinate. I had to re-sow them, and out of ten seeds, only three spindly ones popped up.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to insert photos yet, I’ll try to figure it out 😳
I also want to add that one of these tomatoes accidentally ended up planted outdoors in the dirt, and it did perfectly fine out there, pushing out tomatoes from 10.5 oz to 1.5 lbs (300 to 700 g).
This variety made me very happy, there were a ton of large, uniformly sized tomatoes. Grew it in the hoop house.
This variety was a bust for me. Only a few good fruits fully ripened. To be fair, my seedlings were spindly and weak, so maybe I just had a bad batch of seeds.
Possibly, you’d have to look into it. Mine turned out just like in the ladies’ photos above. Large and prolific, looks a lot like Pink Honey (Rozovyi Myod) except rounder. I literally had to tie up every single fruit individually, the branches were snapping under the weight. But personally, I’d rate the taste a B-minus.
I thought they were tasty 😋. Such a high-quality, aromatic tomato flavor. And very meaty 👍. The yield wasn’t extremely high for me, but to make up for it, every single one was a monster beefsteak 🤠.
Mine was gorgeous, massive, and a very heavy yielder, but the inside was full of thick green veins/cores 😳. Could I have done something wrong? 🤷♀️
Red Butter Heart in terms of taste… umm… it’s not sour, but not intensely sweet either. It’s more of a refreshing taste, I guess. It lacks that punchy, classic tomato flavor. It kind of reminds me of Orange Perfection, but not exactly. Long story short, it’s tasty…
Red Butter Heart. Haven’t tried them yet, still green.
I had 2 bushes of RBH: one pruned to 1 stem, and one to 2 stems. By September 5th, both had yielded 6 large fruits of roughly the same size, about 1.5-1.7 lbs (700-800 g) each. You absolutely must tie up the fruit trusses. Good taste, but I had to counter-ripen almost all of them indoors. It’s too late of a variety for me. I pull all my plants out of the greenhouses in early September.
This past season, Red Butter Heart grew much better from my own saved seeds than from the purchased ones. Yield was average. There were some green veins inside, but very minor. The flavor has a pleasant tang to it.
The bush is tall and slender. There weren’t a lot of tomatoes, but then again, our weather was an absolute nightmare. Very tasty, sweetish, and truly buttery texture. The skin is a little thick, but I think that’s just due to my growing conditions. I will plant it again and will probably prune it to 2 stems next time. Seeds from Redko.
Got the seeds from a forum swap. Pruned to 2 stems, harvested maybe 3-4 tomatoes and they weren’t huge, around 10.5 oz (300 g). Maybe it was the summer weather, maybe my gardening skills! I’ll plant it again!
It was one of the very first to start fruiting for me. Heavy yielder and tasty. Seeds from Elena Lisenok. Thank you to her! The first photo is the first fruit set on June 3rd.
Edited November 28, 2017 by Lyudmila D.
I grew this variety in the greenhouse in 2019. Fruits were also 10.5 oz to 1.6 lbs (300 to 750 g). Total yield > 7.7 lbs (3.5 kg). I liked the variety and will absolutely be planting it again. The cross-section photo file size is too big to upload. 😞
Edited December 7, 2019 by Vladimir Baranov
I waaaaaaaant iiiiit
I’ve been planting Red Butter Heart for 5-6 years now. I love it. Tasty, large-fruited, heavy yielder.
This year, 2020, we planted the seedlings out late, they got overgrown and leggy indoors, and we didn’t prep the soil properly either. The bush is weak and spindly, but there are a few tomatoes hanging on. Here is what it looks like for me this year:
Just tried it, and once again, the taste didn’t thrill me. However, for ketchup or sauces, this thing is the absolute bomb.
My tomato is an old-timer from the private collector V. Redko. It loses slightly on flavor compared to some other tomatoes, but I forgive it everything for its massive size. If you prune it to a single stem and grow it in a greenhouse, a good chunk of the fruits will usually clock in at over 2.2 lbs (1 kg). Incredibly convenient for making juices and sauces.
First season growing RBH. I was blown away by the yield – it set fruit from the bottom to the top without skipping any blossoms. Large, there were absolutely no small ones. Meaty, tasty. Definitely getting a permanent spot on my grow list.
An excellent variety! Yes, it is a heavy yielder, tasty, and large!
