Tomatoes – planning the 2019 season

I’ve been sorting out my tomatoes ready for sowing and looking back at the 2018 season.

Tomatoes are a bit of an obsession with me, my desert island crop, and I grow dozens of plants every year. They are split between the greenhouse – at least two of every variety – and large pots that line the sunny garage wall.

2018 was another good season for them. Fruit set easily and I had a bumper crop, eating the very last tomatoes in mid-December. They had been picked green and ripened indoors, something I do every year. The flavour’s not as fine as sun-ripened tomatoes but still beats anything you can buy.

As part of the 2018 gardening trials, I grew half-a-dozen new varieties alongside my tried and tested favourites.

Many of the tomatoes I tested seemed to have thicker skins, probably a result of the unusually hot weather. We did water regularly but even so the temperatures may have had an effect.

Tomatoes tested

Seeds and plants were supplied free in return for an unbiased review.

I always grow cherry-type tomatoes and was interested to try ‘Sweet Baby’ from Mr Fothergill’s. It had a reasonable flavour albeit a bit watery but the skin was a bit too thick for my taste.

I grew it alongside ‘Cherry Baby’ from Unwins, which was part of the 2017 gardening trials (you can read about those here). This proved to be the family favourite out of the two – sweet with a thin skin.

‘Tumbling Bella’ from Suttons was another new variety last year. It was the first to set fruit and ripen and produced masses of tomatoes per plant.

As the name suggests, it’s designed to tumble down making it ideal for a hanging basket or large pot. I grew them in pots that were set on the greenhouse shelf, which worked really well and made use of a space that is often under-utilised in summer.

Again, the skins were fairly thick but the flavour was good.

The star of the trials was ‘Heinz 1370’ from Dobies’ Rob Smith range. Strictly speaking, this was not a first trial for me as I grew it from plug plants in 2017. However, last season’s plants were raised from seed.

Germination was good and they produced strong plants that fruited well. This is very much a cooking tomato – it’s the original from the famous tomato sauce – and for that it’s perfect. Large fruits with a good flavour were ideal for making pasta sauce.

Another from the Rob Smith range in the trials was ‘Sugar Plum Raisin’, which I was given as a grafted plant by Dobies.

This produced small, plum-like fruits which, if you left them on the vine, ‘dried’ to produce something like a sun-dried tomato.

I’m afraid we weren’t convinced. Yes, they did ‘dry’ on the vine but the flavour didn’t seem significantly better to make it worthwhile. Perhaps I should have tried storing some in olive oil.

However, the grafted plant got away quickly, produced masses of fruit and was good eaten ‘undried’.

Suttons also sent me some plug plants for the 2018 trials, a ‘Tutti-Frutti’ mix. The three varieties, ‘Mandarin’, ‘Cherry’ and ‘Red Berry’, produced cherry-type fruits that were described as having a fruity flavour.

They were the tomatoes we liked least out of those I grew last year, described by the family has having a slightly bitter, almost artificial taste. A shame as they grew strongly and cropped well.

Tomatoes for 2019

This year, I again have several new varieties to try.

Mr Fothergill’s has sent me ‘Super Sauce’, a plum-type tomato that is good for cooking and ‘Shimmer’, an unusual variety that produces small, bronze almond-shaped tomatoes.

I will be growing a couple of cherry tomatoes: ‘Apero’ from Chiltern Seeds, and ‘Honeycomb’ from Suttons.

At the other end of the scale, ‘Crimson Blush’ from Suttons is a beefsteak tomato that is described as the first blight-resistant beefsteak.

The trials will also have a couple of varieties suitable for container growing: ‘Summerlast’ from Suttons, which is a dwarf cherry type, and ‘Lizzano’ from Marshalls, a tumbling variety that can be grown in a hanging basket.

And I will be giving self-drying tomatoes another try, this year with ‘Arielle’ from Marshalls.

Are you growing tomatoes? What are your favourite varieties?

See how my tomato season fares by following the blog.