Yesterday I got to grips with ‘tomato seasons’; the prescribed number of days that different tomato varieties have between planting out and 1st ripe fruit . This varies by as much as 50 days!
I’ve been counting and flicking backwards and forwards in my diary and now have approximate dates for H day dawning here at Tomato Towers.
Approximate because although the period of days for each variety is usually specific i.e 55 days, 68 days, 80 days etc I don’t have an exact date for planting out. (Something else to note on how to do it all better next year !)
Luckily I had the foresight to have a tomato blog! Looking back at the posts in ‘My Tomato Diary’ I can see planting out happened over a two week period ( 18th May to 31st May) so I’ve counted the number of days forward from that 2 week span.
So when can I expect to be picking ?
Early Varieties:
- Tigerella 55 days. H day 11th July to 25th July
- Tumbler 55 days. H day 11th July to 25th July
- Red Robin 55 days. H day 11th July to 25th July
- Sungold 60 days. H day 16th July to 30th July
- Gardeners Delight 65 days. H day 21th July to 4th August
Main Season Varieties
- Alicante 68 days. H day 24th July to 7th August
- Money Maker 70 days. H day 26th July to 9th August
- Cream Sausage 73 days. H day 29th July to 12th August
- Darby Striped ( Can’t find )
Late Season
- Carbon 80 days. H day 5th August to 19th August
- Black Cherry 100 days. H day 25th August to 8th September
- Garden Pearl 100 days. H day 25th August to 8th September
However I’m a bit puzzled by some of this data. For example the top photo taken today is Black Cherry (100 days) . And below is Tigerella ( 55 days). And Garden Pearl ( 100 days) has lots of green fruit as well. They just don’t look that far apart in terms of when they will be ready to pick . So I’ve got something wrong, somewhere. I’ll have to wait and see how it all turns out. But all the same ,I do now like having big red Hs on the calendar to aim for!
I’ll be Watching the Tomatoes, Di Dum, Di Dum….
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