Tomato Growing 2024

For a couple of weeks I’ve been thinking, should I call it a day with my tomato’s plants as I have already got 10kg in the freezer ready for canning,(which is plenty for the two of us) but today I even resorted to counting the toms which were pale green, just in case we have a few more warmer days ahead of us? -LOL, I stopped at 60 as I knew hubby was watching me

2 years ago I would have thought “how sad” but then that was before I caught the bug!

 

On the 1st of July, I took a photo of my most pathetic tomato plant:


Here's how it looks today. A+ for effort.

 

Yesterday's gathering, mostly greenhouse, but quite a few from outside.
I may give up on the outside ones soon but as soup season is upon us we won't need to freeze any more, we can eat a we go.

 

Picked just before the rains:




Variety unknown but some type of beefstake tomato with dense flesh and very few seeds.

 

I discovered that my supermarket squish cherry tomatoes are Golden Vittoria. These seem to be exclusive to Sainsbury's.
Good cropper, and no sign of blight as yet.

 

My supermarket squished are also fruiting really well now and still a delicious flavour (saying still as this years are second generation from the shop bought one). I don’t know the specific variety but they are the red-green cherry from the Tomato Stall Heritage mixed.

 

My pickings from this week, mainly from my little bush tomatoes but a couple of Outdoor Girl in there too. All outside still.

 

Thank you Fred. I have a bit of an aversion to cherry tomatoes. They irritate me! I cannot be doing with tiddly little tomatoes, I prefer to get my hands on something more substantial.

 

I am progressively being won over by Pink Grapefruit. The seeds were started very late and slow to get under way. Now they have caught up and passed the other varieties, set fruit quicker and are ripening more quickly. The flavour suits me, sweet but not sickly and the fruit pleases my eye. They are a beefsteak type with evenly spread flutes rather than random lumps and bumps. The colour is deep orangey pink as opposed to the usual red.I will definitely grow them again.
The Ozark, Big Mama, Cocktail Crush and Surenda's Indian Curry are still bumbling along, producing fruit and flowers but not a sign of ripening.
I have removed as much of the blighted stems and leaves as I can see and have closed the door to improve the temperature and reduce wind carried blight spores.

 

Gosh.......that's quite a little forest you've got there. Nice GH too

 

I forgot about this plant. Both my fantasio and nagina blight resistant outdoor plants succumbed a couple of weeks ago but this rote murmel is still going and appears the fruits are almost unaffected by blight.

 

Interestingly some American web sites describe it as Wild Tomato Rote Murmel (Solanum pimpinellifolium) Solanum pimpenellifolium is a different species to most tomatoes grown in the UK and this is what Plant World Seeds say about it
"This plant bears masses of small, sweet, red fruits, which ripen over a long period in midsummer. Commonly known as the "Currant Tomato", this unusual plant is native to high places in the tropics of Ecuador and Peru but naturalized elsewhere, such as the Galápagos Islands. It will hybridize with tomatoes currently in cultivation, and it is therefore important in tomato breeding. Its relatedness to tomatoes and ability to freely cross with them has allowed it to be used for the introduction of disease resistance traits in tomato varieties, as well as in the study of the genetic control of tomato traits such as fruit shape and size.

 

S. Pimp. is very close to the domestic tom but still a good source of genes as it was before the many bottlenecks S. Lycopersicum had. It is often the case domesticated creatures are named a different species than the wild one, but they reckon even Pimpinellifolium is post domestication, which was ~4-5000 years ago!

The closer to the wild form the more likely it has genes modern toms dont have (due to genetic bottlenecking) which includes the blight resistant genes theyve found. Most came from its sibling species Solanum Habrochiates, the hairy tomato.
This may explain why your rote murmel is more resistant.