Quick Summary of Reinhard’s Chocolate Heart (and the Kraft Trilogy)
- 🌍 Origin: Developed by the renowned German tomato breeder Reinhard Kraft. This variety is part of the famous “Reinhard’s Heart Trilogy,” which includes Chocolate, Green, and Purple heart-shaped tomatoes.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), vigorous plants. Like many classic oxhearts, they possess “wispy” or droopy foliage, which is perfectly normal and not a sign of underwatering.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large, beautiful heart-shaped fruits (often slightly ribbed). The Chocolate version ripens to a stunning terracotta-brown color. They are very meaty and large, frequently weighing between 400g to 600g (14 oz to 1.3 lbs).
- 👅 Flavor: The flavor profile sparks debate among growers! Many describe the Chocolate Heart as sweet, juicy, and slightly tart/astringent with almost no acidity. However, depending on growing conditions, a few growers found them to be watery.
- 💡 Growing Tip: The Chocolate Heart can sometimes be fussy in a hot greenhouse (dropping blossoms) but tends to perform exceptionally well in open ground.
Reinhard’s Chocolate Heart
Indeterminate, an excellent large-fruited and productive variety! It grew in my greenhouse trained to 2 stems. The fruits are brown, meaty, weighing up to 600g (1.3 lbs). There were no small fruits at all, and the taste was excellent. Seeds were from Murka.
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Tatyana, please advise! My Reinhard’s Chocolate Heart topped itself off (determinated) after producing a truss with three flowers. Is there a chance to prolong its growth by letting a sucker grow out, and is it okay to save seeds from such a weirdo plant? The bush itself is sturdy and healthy!
Quote from Anyuta:
Is there a chance to prolong its growth by letting a sucker grow out…
Anna, the sucker will grow out. I had this happen last year with other varieties. Although the bush ended up being shorter than its siblings that didn’t top themselves off, and slightly less productive. And yes, I saved seeds from the healthy bush. It happened in the greenhouse.
I would also like to know, what is the beautiful Reinhard’s Green Heart like? What kind of foliage does it have, height, and yield? It seems like a very beautiful new release of the year!!!
*** About Reinhard’s Green Heart ***
The plant is large and vigorous, but not very leafy… the leaves are long and droopy (wispy). In the end, I only got one plant of the Green Heart, which I watched over tirelessly 😄 and guarded like a little baby. 😘 But, I managed to root a strong sucker from it and grow it into a full-fledged plant! Right now it has one remaining truss with several large fruits forming. The “adult” Green Heart is still growing; I harvested 11 fruits from it in total, and a few more are hanging at the top… The first fruits were quite massive! 😲
Natalya, hi! 🌸 How did you like the taste of Reinhard’s Green Heart?
I didn’t like a single one of the hearts—not Reinhard’s Chocolate Heart, not Reinhard’s Green Heart, nor Reinhard’s Purple Heart. The taste was sweet-watery, empty, exactly like sweetened water, and if allowed to ripen a bit more or overripen, it became sweet-bland-bitter.
*** About Reinhard’s Chocolate Heart ***
Seeing a tomato plant with chocolate hearts in my greenhouse—believe me, it was a pleasant surprise for me and my guests who stopped by several times during the season! 🙂 It’s not every year you get to test such new releases, especially the complete TRILOGY from Reinhard Kraft (as Elena put it) 👏—three beautiful HEARTS at once! 😘
I got the seeds quite late on April 10th, sowed them immediately, but unfortunately, only one plant survived to be planted in the greenhouse. Naturally, it received maximum attention. The plant pleased me from the very beginning—strong, with beautiful, slightly droopy (wispy) large leaves.
The first truss bloomed around mid-June, and the first fruits set 2 weeks later. The first fruits were large, the largest being 418g (14.7 oz)…
As for the taste—it’s distinct, juicy, sweet-tart/astringent, with practically no acidity. The flesh is dense and thick… These are my impressions. Beautiful on the cross-section! 📝
Quote from ElenaN:
I didn’t like a single one of the hearts… The taste was sweet-watery, empty…
Elena, hi! 🌸 Well, first of all, our tastes are all different (let’s not argue about colors 😄), and taste perception depends on many factors… they say even on your mood!
To me, the tastiest of these HEARTS seemed to be the Purple one—a perfect harmony of sweetness and acidity 😋.
Green Heart—the taste was tart, sweet, and when overripe—very sweet, with no acidity at all…
Chocolate Heart—juicy, sweet-tart…
I didn’t sense any bitterness at all in any of the Hearts! My fruits didn’t ripen off the vine; I picked them only when fully ripe from the plants.
Reinhard’s Purple Heart
The smallest in size of the three Reinhard Kraft Hearts, but the tastiest 😋 (in my opinion and comparison)…
I’ll write a bit about my impressions of this Reinhard Trilogy. All the bushes of these hearts are indeterminate, quite strong with droopy, long wispy leaves.
The most productive was the Purple Heart; it immediately had many fruit sets. The taste for me is very good, excellent firmness, quite a juicy tomato, beautiful dark color!
The Green Heart conquered me with its sweetness; I don’t remember such a taste in green-fruited varieties. Usually, they are sweetish, but here it’s distinctly sweet—but you must let the tomatoes fully ripen on the bush. Yield for the GH is good, tied fruit all the way to the top. The cutworm caterpillars also loved this heart; you can’t fool those pests, I noticed they only eat the tasty varieties!
And the Chocolate Heart was the most fussy for me. In the greenhouse, it dropped blossoms at first, but things were much better in open ground. Later, the greenhouse one corrected itself and set some hearts for me. When ripe, they turned out to be beautifully firm, slightly ribbed hearts with an unusually beautiful terracotta-chocolate color. All the hearts are large; there were some huge specimens.
Thank you Tatyana for the opportunity to test these varieties in my garden, I got a lot of positivity out of it!!!
