Tomato Taste Test - again!

The tomato harvest is now at it's peak, yesterday's pickings:




It's been a funny old year in the greenhouse. I've been plagued with grey mould (Botrytis), mainly because I crammed in too many plants and the poor light levels/high humidity didn't help either. But there have been more than enough from the 10 varieties I've grown, some have failed and others have had a bumper crop.




In order of my preference:

1. Golden Sunrise is my favourite again, very soft and thin skinned. It's got a distinctive medium sweet and not tangy taste. Mrs JWK says it's too watery for her. It always has a low yield and is susceptible to fungal attacks. I need to find another yellow variety that has disease resistance.

2. Floridity F1 (RHS taste trial winner) Very firm nice texture and much sweeter this year. This is Mrs JWKs favourite. It has lost some leaves to grey mould but because it's so vigorous it's hardly affected. The plants are enormous, on their 10th truss, with a couple more trusses still to ripen.

3. Sungold is small, sweet and very tasty - very prolific and not much affected by grey mould.

4. Black Cherry, a small soft slightly savoury fruit, thicker skinned than the rest of my trial, not much affected by grey mould.

5. Amish Paste (seed from Capney) are nice and firm not mushy like other beefsteak types I've tried in the past. They are great in a salad and cooked. The grey mould has taken it's toll on these, I've only managed two trusses and no more to come.

6. New Girl (not in photo), exceptionally early but the plants succumbed to grey mould so I pulled them up a month ago. Taste wise they were excellent, nearly all the fruit unmarked and very firm.

7. Shirley F1 (seed from Kristen) - I've not grown this before, it has a classic tomato tangy taste with firm texture.

8. Koralik (seed from Shiney) - this is a bush (Determinate) type which can't be tamed! However the small fruit are lovely and sweet, and as the season goes on it gets better and better and is the only tomato not affected by the grey mould. I meant to grow this outdoors as it has blight resistance, next year...

9. Oxheart (plant from Shiney) - I only managed half a dozen fruit from this before the whole plant succumbed to mould and they have been a bit bland.

10. Gardener's Delight, in past years this has been my favourite with a very sweet, firm, tangy taste - this year it's been stunted by the grey mould attacks which has affected the taste.


All in my humble opinion of course

 

Very nice, John, even if, in my opinion, it's not been the best year for Toms

 

Are the fruit very big outdoors Scrungee?

 

John, I don't think they get much bigger than yours when planted outdoors but they are cetainly prolific. They are the only ones that haven't caught the blight - although the others only have a touch of it and we seem to be keeping it under control.

Scrungee, They do need quite a bit of room but last year I solved some of the problem by training them on canes. The longer stalks I tied to the canes and trained them vertically and horizontally. They were then much easier to pick. You have to be very careful when tying them in as the stems are quite thin and break easily. So tying them in needs to be done as soon as possible. I planted them in a single long row about 3ft apart which made it easy to get to them from both sides.

We've only got four plants this year and Mrs shiney picked nearly 300 toms from them last weekend - she has been picking a punnet full about once a week since early in the season. They were our earliest fruiting tomato - even before any in the greenhouse.

 

Yes, that's about the normal size. They are the second smallest of the ones we usually gorw. The smaller ones are Hundreds & Thousands.

Now you see why I grow them in single rows with plenty of space either side.

 

Is anyone growing other blight resistant varieties?