I’ve been sowing tomatoes and looking back at the results of the 2019 gardening trials.
I grow a lot of tomatoes. Every year, I vow to cut down on the numbers but it doesn’t seem to work.
It’s the usual story of sowing a few extra in case of disaster and then pricking them all out for the same reason. By the time they’re little plants I haven’t the heart to compost them and so pots are filled and we live on tomatoes for months.
That said, if there’s one thing that sums up summer to me, it’s being able to eat sun-warmed tomatoes fresh from the vine.
Last year, my gardening trials, saw me growing the usual wide range from tiny cherry fruit to big beefy tomatoes. There were purple-skinned varieties, the traditional red, a yellow and one with a bronze tinge.
Some were an immediate hit with the family, others less so. Naturally, tastes in tomatoes are as varied as the varieties available and what was liked in our household may not be the same in others. Growing conditions will also affect things such as flavour and texture.
There were a few that stood out as crowd-pleasers. ‘Apero’, sent to me by Chiltern Seeds was summed up as having a good flavour, sweet and juicy with skin that wasn’t too tough – a particular dislike with us. It’s a cherry type tomato.
‘Summerlast’, from Suttons Seeds, is a dwarf plant, perfect for patio pots and I potted one up for my mum. The fruit was more acidic than ‘Apero’ and it had a crunchier texture. However, the skin wasn’t tough and it was very juicy.
One of the best of the 2019 tomatoes was ‘Honeycomb’, also from Suttons. This yellow-skinned fruit was prolific – the first to fruit and one of the last to finish. Again, it had good flavour.
‘Divinity’ from Thompson and Morgan, is a blight-resistant cherry but proved disappointing. It had a sweet flavour but the skin was too tough for our tastes – possibly due to the season.
‘Midnight Snack’, also from Thompson and Morgan, had amazing purple-tinged cherry fruit but we decided the skin was a bit tough and it didn’t have a lot of flavour.
Thompson and Morgan also sent me ‘Sweet Aperitif’, which has long been one of my absolute favourite cherry tomatoes. It didn’t disappoint.
‘Shimmer’, from Mr Fothergill’s, was another with an unusual colour, this time a bronze tinge. The fruit were also distinctly almond-shaped. Despite a slightly thicker skin, I liked this one for the flavour and may have eaten a few before they reached the house.
Marshalls Seeds sent me ‘Arielle’ and ‘Lizzano’ for the 2019 gardening trials. ‘Arielle’ is a cherry tomato with a great flavour and lots of juice. It does have a thicker skin than though.
‘Lizzano’ is another of the blight-resistant varieties and had a good flavour that was nicely tart at first, finishing sweet.
It wasn’t all cherry tomatoes though and I did grow a few bigger varieties. ‘Oh Happy Day’ is a Heritage variety from Pennard Plants. I was given it as part of a trial of compost designed for growing tomatoes that was launched by Dalefoot Composts last year.
The latest in the range of peat-free composts made from bracken and sheep’s wool, it has the same water-retaining properties but also has enough nutrients to eliminate the need to feed tomato plants.
In fact, chatting to the Pennard team at Chelsea, it seems feeding can be a distinct disadvantage as they discovered when someone inadvertently fed their show plants. The overdose of nutrients meant fruit split, rendering it useless for display. Whatever you do, don’t feed plants in this compost, I was warned.
So, I didn’t and the plants fared well all summer producing huge tomatoes with a good flavour, great for a sandwich.
Thompson and Morgan sent me mystery seeds that to begin with had just a code rather than a name. They turned out to be ‘Gourmandia’, a large tomato with a reasonable flavour that’s perfect for cooking.
Others that are ideal for tomato sauce were the aptly named ‘Super Sauce’ from Mr Fothergill’s and ‘Heinz (1350) Souper Tomato’ from Dobies. Both are great cooking tomatoes – particularly when it comes to the fiddly business of skinning and de-seeding.
A late addition to the gardening trials was ‘Noire Charbonouse’, which I was given by Liz and Kate of Harrells Hardy Plants. One of the joys of gardening is the generosity of other gardeners.
This, as the name suggests, had dark skin and was juicy with a good flavour. I did find it succumbed to blight quickly though.
Finally, as part of the trials, I tested a Melcourt SylvaGrow growbag, a firm that’s based near me in the Cotswolds.
This was a peat-free compost and proved that you really don’t need peat to grow good tomatoes. The plants I put in it thrived and the deeper than usual bag meant it dried out less quickly.
The firm, which has long supplied the professional trade, is now producing for amateur gardeners and recently launched the ‘bag for life’ scheme to cut down on plastic use.
I’ve already lined up some new varieties to try this season. Will it be the one when tomatoes don’t take over the garden?
You can read about my 2019 vegetable gardening trials here.
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