2013 Tomato Growing

So I'm searching for tomatoes for next year, and set my mind on a couple of russian varieties, Paul Robeson and Anna Russian... Anyone had any experience with them/has spare seeds?

I also found this: Reisetomato it's called, funniest variety I've seen

 

A quick question, am I right in thinking that Gardener's Delight are roughly the red equivalent in habit, production and taste of Sun Baby? Bizarrely, I've never grown GD before.

 

Just been staring at my tomatoes..... this is the first time in 40 odd years of growing them that i have plants almost full of ripe fruit.....if there's half a dozen green tomatoes on each plant that's all there is....never had it before...usually i've had dozens of fruit still to ripen at this time of the year and normally pick my last toms in November.....looks like they'll be finished much earlier this year.....

 

It's a funny thing, I've never had problems with getting them to ripen. In fact, quite the opposite. Mine, as in previous years will be finished in another couple of weeks, I reckon. This year has been very good for me in terms of yield. Even my outdoor ones are producing well, even though some of them have blight. Flavour though isn't as good, imo, with the outdoor ones. Interesting to note that the blight resistant varieties are holding up well (Ferline & Legend).

 

My Maskotkas are all but finished but my cordon types are very reluctant to ripen and I will have maybe 4/5ths of the crop still green,
Jenny

 

Picked my first Angelia's Bulgarian and my first Fuerteventura. Angelian's on the left and the Canary Island one on the right:

and the two of them cut open:


both very tasty, juicy and nicely acidic but, out of the two, I felt that the Fuerteventura one had an extra "note" that was intriguing,
Jenny

 

Some of my cordon varieties such as (polytunnel) Sungella still haven't produced a single ripe fruit and my (outdoor) Lldi are only just starting to ripen.

But what I specifically came onto this thread for was to ask if anybody else was interested in participating in a bit of tomato myth busting by growing some plants from seeds saved from F1 varieties.

I've saved seeds from F1 Red Alert (very early outdoor bush) and F1 Sungold (very sweet, golden, cherry cordon) for many, many years, hardly noticing any difference whatsoever in the former, but variations in size, colour and sweetness in the later.

As I've previously mentioned, I have virtually unlimited capacity/space to conduct a trial like this, but I'd be interested in both whether anybody would either like to participate or just make suggestions as to what comparisons would be useful.

 

I regret that I have not enough space to join in this trial Scrungee

 

I'm still waiting for my polytunnel grown ones to show any sign of ripening.

 

@Scrungee ....i promised myself i'd go back to my normal couple of varieties next year....but i'm curious about this...so i'm going to give it a go...i'm saving seed from Tumbler F1 and Beefmaster so far

 

If i've got a garden next spring i'd give that a go

 

I'll happily contribute some of my enormous stockpile of T&M Sungold seeds (that I got for 20p/pkt this year instead of £2.99) to the tomato seed swop together with some saved Sungold seeds (F2) from this year to anybody the first dozen or so who's willing to trial at least one plant (preferably 2 or 3) against the proper F1 stuff.