Hi Lee,

I think that in our climate, most oxheart tomato varieties in general do deserve their reputation for being poor performers, but I grew a lot of oxheart varieties anyway this year since we were having so much rain. I figured that since they had not done well in years where we warmed up early in winter and had relatively hot and dry winter weather, then maybe they'd do better in a wet year.

I have tried almost every oxheart variety offered by the seed companies I patronize, and have been underwhelmed by their performance in general, and that dates back to the late 1990s through through around 2008 or so when I mostly gave up on oxhearts.

For me, Kosovo produced maybe 3 tomatoes in the 3rd year I grew it, and none in the first two years. Anna Russian, when I tried it, was only slightly better. After trying all kinds of oxhearts for about 6-8 years, I gave up. Some of the other ones that I remember that did not do well here include Reif Red Heart, Rostova/Sunset's Red Horizon, Russian 117, Livingston's Oxheart, Orange Russian 117, Wes, Oxheart, Ukrainian Heart and German Red Strawberry. After about 200-09, I pretty much stopped wasting space on oxhearts.

Having said that, my soil is a lot better now than it was when I was trying a lot of oxhearts, and I have floating row cover I can use to cover up plants and get them off to an earlier start in spring. So, the last 3 or 4 years, I've slowly been adding back a few paste hearts. Three that have produced well for several years here are Charol Chyko's Big Paste, Carol Chyko's Big Paste Black and Brad's Black Heat. The Chyko's both are not paste tomatoes, but are juicy oxhearts that are great for fresh eating. A year or two after adding those, I grew Cherokee Purple Heart, which produced early and produced big tasty oxhearts through about mid-summer. Then I grew Dolly Parton, and the fruit I got bore no resemblance to any part of the real Dolly Parton's anatomy, but instead gave me small red tomatoes. I am not sure if I purchased crossed seed or what, but they were small globes and not large hearts. There were, however, lots of them and they produced all summer long. Once we got really hot, that plant became much less productive, but not until it was really, really hot and dry so I think it might stay very productive in a milder summer.

This year I decided to grow several more oxhearts. These are the oxhearts I grew this year: German Red Strawberry, Yellow Oxheart, Brad's Black Heart, Joe's Pink Oxheart, Cherokee Purple Heart, Dwarf Purple Heart, Kim's Civil War Oxheart, Yellow Oxheart, and Anna Banana Russian. Bear in mind that rain had started falling here back midway through June of 2014 and never really stopped, so all the oxhearts listed above were growing in weather that was perfect for them---a long, mild, rainy spring, followed by a lot of rain in early summer. They produced accordingly----we got tons and tons of oxhearts this year. It was sort of amazing.

The earliest oxhearts we harvested were from Kim's Civil War Oxheart, which produced big pink fruit early in the season, and smaller ones as the summer went on. It also was a pretty heavy producer. All the oxhearts produced well this year except for Anna Banana Russian, which went into the ground late and might have been in too much shade. Joe's Pink was only slightly behind Kim's Civil War, and it produced huge pink oxhearts and it produced them all summer long. I loved Joe's Pink. German Red Strawberry was slower to bloom and set fruit, but it continued setting fruit well into June, and it produced moderately well. Dwarf Purple Heart, from The Dwarf Project, produced heavily for such a small plant. Yellow Oxheart was late and not a heavy producer, but the fruit had great flavor. It was thrilling to have so many oxhearts this year, and I have no idea how much credit the weather gets for that. I'll just have to grow them all again next year to see if I get the same results in a year with different weather.

Hope this helps. Now that I've had such a good yield from several varieties of oxhearts, I feel like I'll probably add a couple of new ones every year in the endless search to find oxhearts that perform well in the heat. Joe's Pink Oxheart, by the way, is from the Ozarks, so I suspect it likely will perform here even in hotter, drier weather than we had this year since it is from our general region.

When we were in the midst of the excessive rainfall in May and June (roughly 38-39" for us in those two months, if my memory is correct), some of the oxhearts had flavor that was somewhat watered down (as did all the tomato varieties in my garden) but as the rain stopped and fruit matured in hotter, drier conditions, their flavor got better and better. I also noticed that many of the oxhearts did not suffer from concentric or longitudinal cracking nearly as much as beefsteak and slicers did during the heavy rainfall. That was a plus for the oxheart varieties as well.

Dawn

Thank you, Dawn! This exactly what I needed.

Lee, You're welcome! I think oxhearts likely will do better for you in your location than they do down here for me where we tend to heat up too early. If you grow some, I hope you'll keep us posted on how they do.

You might want to look at the website of the Tomato Man's Daughter and see what heart varieties she sells there in Jenks, just as a reference point. If there are oxhearts that do well in NE OK, then I suspect her dad grew them and that she still carries them.

Dawn

I go to TMD often when they are open and I'm looking for plants. She was my main source for plants when I first started. Even though I'm mostly growing from seed now, I still go out and visit her farm a few times during the seasons. She doesn't seem to have very many oxhearts. This past Spring, she had Oxheart and Orange Oxheart. I'll have to shoot her an email to find out why they don't have many. Maybe it's because they typically don't do well with our weather. Anyway, since I'm growing from seed now, I figured I would have many more to choose from to try. I'll make up my mind over the next 2 or 3 months and likely order some seeds. I'll let you know how they do.