]> 2026-04-05T06:21:46-07:00 George Detsikas Italian Red 0 Italy red heart beefsteak large slicer indet. * A family heirloom that originally came from Italy. * The seeds originally came to Tracy Mathesius of Illinois via Maureen Key-Del Duca of Colorado from Kathy Carella in Ontario, Canada. Kathy's father George Detsikas had saved seeds from these tomatoes each year for decades. This seed was from the last batch that her father grew in 2013, as he passed away over the winter. George was originally given the seeds over 25 years ago by an old Italian man who had brought the seeds from Italy. The family always referred to them simply as "George's Tomatoes". The family described them as "giant beautiful sweet dark red tomatoes". * Tracy Mathesius grew out 3 plants in isolation in 2014, and shared the seed with many tomato gardeners via Tomatoville gardening forum. regular midseason Tracy Mathesius of Illinois open-pollinated family heirloom 2018-01-18T11:51:22Z 2458136.9940046 George Detsikas Italian Red George Detsikas Italian Red#001# Illinois George Detsikas Italian Red For me, even in a non-ideal location, these tomatoes were the first to ripen (of almost 40 varieties), and were very vigorous and productive. They produced good sized tomatoes, many over 1 lb. Some look to be blunt hearts, others not really. They are very meaty and juicy, with a good rich old-fashioned flavor. Maureen Key-Del Duca of Colorado / Kathy Carella in Ontario, Canada 2014 George Detsikas Italian Red#002# New Plymouth, Idaho George Detsikas Italian Red In 2016, this produced four large, impressive-looking fruits, with decent taste. They were about 2lbs each. I had a feeling it could be much more productive in future years from the seeds I saved. To be fair, it was crowded with other plants (as were many of my other tomatoes, in 2016). In 2017, I grew one plant from a seed of the largest fruit I had in 2016; it had somewhat less sun than the full sun it had in 2016, and much less water, but it produced more fruit (and very large fruit, still, but they had more flavor and were not as dense, probably on account of watering them less). It had more above-ground space in 2017, but was still crowded. This was one of my favorite varieties of 2017, and probably the largest of about 105 varieties (rivaled for size only by Pink Berkeley Tie Dye, Evergreen, and Chapman; I preferred its taste in 2017 to any of these other large ones in 2017, though, but I preferred the taste of Chapman in 2016 to that of George Detsikas Italian Red in 2016). ginger2778 of tomatoville.com (from Marsha's 2016 SASE SEED OFFER) 2016 2017