2013 Tomato Growing

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I would have described mine as 'grape sized' (and even grape shaped) in the first year I grew Koralik, but their blight resistance made up for lack of flavour. I just hope that breeding to increase size doesn't reduce blight resistance

 

A small taster...

Left a couple of baby Better Boys,centre...Tumbler F1's ,top right Alicante and bottom right baby Beefmaster......i must say to me they all have a distinct different flavour...all nice...but i do like my Alicante's

 

A fabulous looking haul there John I'll be looking for a little more colour next year...

 

I have not the heart to cut them off, but my Tigerella's are growing peculiar
the truss sets. but the end keeps growing setting another truss, then again
I know I must nip the end off or the plant will not have any strength, but the three trusses, have well formed 2" tomatoes ?

Jack McH

 

I am growing Alicante and see today that quite as few of the trusses are bent over. There are quite a lot of big chunky tomatoes per truss, so the weight must be too much.

Nothing I can do now I suppose, but let them ripen and enjoy.

What should i do next year to prevent a similar thing happening. I don't think I have noticed this problem before. I haven't grown toms for a few years, but did quite a few years ago, for many seasons.

Has anybody tried Craigella .. I used to grow these.

 

Taste being subjective I wonder if it is worth swapping fruit for a testing session?

JWK and I swapped some fruit at the East Ruston meet. I thought my Toms were flavourless ... so did JWK. Now I am wondering why that would be? They spent a long time in undersized pots in the Spring as I had too much to do. I am also slow to move them from the conservatory, which is warm in April / May to the greenhouse that still gets chilly nights - perhaps I should be braver.

I also think that I need to start a few much earlier - they are only just starting to ripen - although they are just as tall as the others so I don't know if starting soon would help, or just give me very tall plants? Perhaps I could stop one of the plants at end July to force faster fruit development (rather than stopping at end August as I do normally).

(All my Toms are in the greenhouse)

 

JWK said this of my tomatoes:

Golden Sunrise: Yours are more orange coloured than mine, thicker skinned and a bit more tangy/tasty although very watery.

Sungold: Yours were watery, blander and less sweet than mine.

Black Cherry: Yours had a vinegary taste which I think is due to deteriorating on the journey. Yours are blander and thinner skinned.

Rosada: Yours are the same as mine and to be honest I don't like them (yours or mine).

Floridity: Yours are the same as mine, nice taste and firm.

Austin Yellow pear: Yours are a bit watery and bland compared to mine.

Sungella: Yours didn't seem to have any taste. Mine are quite nice tasting although just as watery as yours.

Black Russian: Yours are watery but mine haven'rt ripened yet so I can't compare.

Pink brandywine: I'm not growing this one so I can't compare. It was a bit watery though.


Overall yours are more watery, but I wonder if that is due to the long time they spent in the back of my car.

and this is what I thought of his

Rosada outdoors - Firm & Tasty

Gardeners Delight G.House - taste as expected (not grown it this year, too many others to fit them in, but I think I will grow it next year as its hard to go wrong with it)

Black Cherry G.House - firm, nice.

Red Robin Outdoors - not enough flavour for me

Little Sun Outdoors - not enough flavour for me

Sungold greenhouse - nice flavour

New Girl - G.House - Big! Firm and good flavour with some acidity.

 

On Gardeners World Monty Don did a taste test of his Gardeners Delight - Growbag, normal pot and terracotta pot 1/2 filled with compost. He said they all tasted the same and the Growbag had the highest yield - which he was a bit miffed to admit!

 

I'm growing Ferline for the first time this year (about 60 plants) and have found them slow to produce flowers & set fruit, hardly any tomatoes on them (only 4 fruits per truss!) and none show any sign of ripening yet.

 

Just a polite question ... why would you grow 60 plants of a single variety that you have not grown before ?

Shirley (don't call me shirley !!) Surely you should start with only a few

 

Because

1) Ferline seeds were really cheap from T&M last year, reduced to 49p down from £2.99 max 3 packets per order so I submitted loads of multiple orders when they had free P&P promotions http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/t-m-free-p-p-weekend.48339/#post-618409, plus went through a cashback site. Cashback at T&M is currently 12.6% http://www.topcashback.co.uk/search/merchants/?s=Thompson+and+Morgan

2) Ferline are supposed to be blight resistant and last year's blight wiped out all of my tomatoes apart from my blight resistant Koraliks (which taste rather bland).

3) No matter what they taste like for eating raw, they can always be roasted with some garlic, put through a passata machine and pasteurised in jars.

4) 60 Plants is only a small fraction of the tomatoes I'm growing.


P.S. I forgot to mention above when posting about Koralik that they grow very well under lights producing lovely healthy stocky plants for planting out. I the taste just ate a couple of fruits and the taste is as bland as I remember, so maybe I should also be selecting fruits for seed saving on taste (if there's any difference) in addition to size.