Which Tomato Variety do you like?

Roma is a late one and very blight-sensitive, so you are a bit at the mercy of the season, but in a good year they can be embarrassingly prolific. They can make very big plants but I find this bush variety have got nil self-supporting power and tend to end up sprawling all over the ground. I find that late season ripening tends to get stuck at the orange stage outdoors, but if picked and brought inside they go bright red in a few days. You can end up with a house covered in bowls of ripening tomatoes. I use them to make my own unsalted puree which I then freeze and use (hopefully) throughout the year. It is just **SO** much more tasty than that sawdust in tubes and cans.

 

Ditto

I tend to grow the same as my Dad did, Gardener's Delight and Moneymaker.

He also grew Ailsa Craig from seed but I've never grown any tomato from seed. How easy is it for a novice (with an unheated greenhouse)?

 

"How easy is it for a novice"

They will grow easily from seed on a windowsill, but they need plenty of light, so will get leggy otherwise - which in turn means they will make fewer trusses per foot-height, and thus may hit the roof of your greenhouse with fewer trusses than a stocky plant would do.

The other problem is size. You will need to sow them at just the right time that you can move them to your unheated greenhouse before you get to the point where you can't see out of the windows in your house!

I suppose the last problem is price. Well, the distress of wasted plants. If you want two varieties and, lets say, 3 or 4 plants of each, that's two packets of seed (plus some compost). For that number buying young plants from the garden centre is probably no more expensive. If you want lots of varieties the economics are worse, if you want more plants they improve. Seed should keep for a couple of years or more though.

 

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Like Tim in the American DIY TV programme who says; "give me more power", then everything goes to pot.

I say "beef tomatoes" have more taste and zip!
I used to grow Dombito, but the seed is no longer available, so now it is Legend for me!
With beef you can eat them, slice them,fry them, make tomao soup with them, or at least my wife does!

Whereas cherry tomatoes are only good for throwing at cats useing your soil for a toilet!
Have you ever tried cutting cherry ones with a blunt knife,they end up on your neighbours plate!

As Jeremy Clarkson would say, they are a big girls tomato!

The only advantage cherry have over beef, is they are much easier to grow!

So next year, get the power!

Cheers

 

Every year I grow Sungold and also try one or two other varieties, but so far Sungold is simply the best, very sweet in salads and delicious cooked too. This year I have grown an Australian variety "Tommy Toe" which T & M said won taste tests over there, but Sungold is still the best for me - we've been eating them for about 3 weeks now (unheated greenhouse in Cumbria) and they usually go on until the first frosts. The only drawback is the size and I am on a quest to find a larger tomato with a similar flavour - but so far no luck.

 

I got some hundreds and thousands, amongst others, though they are a bit too small. They've so far escaped the blight, and in the sun just today they seem to have started to ripen. I hope they taste alright. I now have an idea, from everyone else, as to what to try next year.

 

Shirley every time! Grown from seed and have just started picking. 3 plants in the greenhouse and two on a South facing wall, all looking great and tasting Mmmm.

 

Shirley by far the best i have grown. Contol your watering ie automatic via 12v caravan pump.
This on a 230v timer controling 230/12v transformer.
You water to the bottom of your plants , feed manually to the top roots.

 

Just seen your fantastic basket full well done JWK

 

"my favourites are still the yellow ones ("Golden Sunrise")."

I have some yellow Autumn Raspberries. They taste lovely, but none of us can persuade ourselves that they are "proper" Raspberries, and there are fair number of twits who visit who ask why I pick them before they are ripe ...

... I can't see Yellow Toms faring any better :(

Is there a "Red Sunset" equivalent?

 

we grow lots of varieties, all good for sthg
green sausage for chutney
cherrola, its a cherry variety, was veg of the year I think
roma and san marzano for the jars
black prince hmmmm it really is just purple of course, but the tates fantastic, and loves the english summer, as from Russia

 

My Ferline are cropping well now. The Legend though are very irregular shapes with lots of scars. Don't think I'll be bothering with these again.