This the first batch – getting leggy!
However they are also putting out the first true leaf. It might not look very leaf-like at this stage. But I know that within the space of the summer – it will become a photosynthesising powerhouse – and one that at some stage, being a lower leaf, I will undoubtedly take the secateurs to!
There is now a second batch, sown on April 1st. Varieties: Black Prince, Britain’s Breakfast and Tomatoberry.
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Like so many things at the moment, I don’t think I got to finish looking at what was new in the Suttons tomato collection. ( The only thing that seems to get an end at the moment are the months. Can it really be time to stride out of March and into April?)
I did look at grafted varieties – so these are just the normal plants. Here the only new variety is Lizzano which here appears as a Pot Ready plant.
And although not Lizzano – some varieties now come as Potted Plants. Pot Ready are “Healthy plants, invidually rooted in large plugs of compost. Grow on in pots under cover prior to planting in their final postions.” Whereas Potted are “Well established plants in 10cm pots that can be planted straight into their final positions“.
At the moment the only tomato varieties avaliable as Potted are Conchita, Cupido and Elegance from the grafted range and Hundreds & Thousands ( a micro tomato, good for hanging baskets and containers).
Price difference – 3 grafted Pot Ready £9.99 – Potted £11.97. Which if you are going to go down the catalogue plant buying route, I think I would stump up the extra 66p per plant and be done with it.
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Five weeks ago, this was a shop-bought cherry tomato. Popped into compost and now look!
I was given the pot of seedlings to bring home and pot on. But I’ll also be trying this for myself. How neat and trouble-free is that as an approach to sowing?
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6 Red Alerts sown, 6 up and waving. 4 Lizzanos sown, 2 up, 2 no shows.
A little confusing – there being only 7 seedlings in the photo. I popped one of the germinated Lizzanos on the windowsill behind the blind in the kitchen and forgot I’d done that. Odd thing to be playing – hunt the tomato seedling! Found it but too late to be in shot.
I am not taken with the coir as a safe and snug seedling home. It’s keeping the water level right which is tricky. So I am going to allow myself to have a little coir-carp about it – and then be less lazy and sown the next batch in compost.
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I bought grafted tomato plants from Suttons two years ago. They introduced this concept and range to the home grower with a selection of five grafted varieties – Conchita, Belricco, Dasher, Elegance and Santorange. I was the most impressed with Santorange, not least because it won me my first ever show class! This core range is still going strong with only one line-up change. Dasher has been dropped and replaced by a variety called Cupido “ A red plum cherry tomato with excellent taste, which can be harvested loose or as a truss. The fruit average 15-20 grams and have very high brix with good cracking tolerance.”
Another new grafted variety is Orangino “An orange cocktail tomato with excellent taste. The round, shiny fruits are on uniform trusses of 8. The plant is open and fruits have an average weight of 35 grams, with a good shelf life.”
And then new and novel is a Tomato Twin. Two varieties – Florryno and Orangino on one plant. The idea being that on each plant you will get two separate fruiting stems, a variety on each stem.
They’ve clearly been living up to their name in the grafting department, as not have they introduced new varities and twins – but they’ve also been refining the grafting technique. Whereas the grafting point used to be below the cotyledon leaves, it is now higher, above the first true leaves. The advantage of this it “will lead to even earlier and bigger crops, with fruit beginning lower on the stems, producing at least one extra fruit truss per plant during the season”.
And if that wasn’t enough, this is also the year that the Three Tomato Tenors have been grafted. For the first time, you can get Gardener’s Delight, Shirley and Moneymaker all as grafted plants. I can see those being popular.
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What else is new in the Sutton tomato selection for 2012? Yesterday I took a look at F1 Lizzano. Highlighted as a truly outstanding new variety.
Today I am looking at the other three new varities, avaliable as seed.
F1 Giulietta. Plum Fruited. Ideal for sandwiches, frying or grilling. Bred by own group, this large-fruited ‘Italian’ plu,m variety performed superbly in last year’s trials. The fruits set well, even under cool conditions and are juicy and delicious. It produces high yields and boasts a good range of disease resistance.
Initially I was going to put it in the same punnet as Roma or San Marzano. But then I thought they are good for cooking, especially for making sauce and Giulietta gets name checked for sandwiches. And yes – frying and grilling but the fruit is still kept and eaten whole. So an interesting innovation? Price to find out – £2.15 for 7 seeds.
F1 Spencer. Medium Fruited. For Greenhouse Culture. Early-maturing. A standard, indeterminate variety. Spencer is intended for growing in a greenhouse, polytunnel or a sheltered spot outside. The fruits are medium-sized, strong red in colour, and have a good flavour.
Not sure why the Shirley lovers would swap to Spencer as this ‘shirley’ has to be the same market? Perhaps good to think of it as a complementary variety- as Barbie has her Ken – so Shirley now has Spencer? Price of true love – £1.99 for 7 seeds.
Megabite. A superb dwarf variety. A windowsill variety. Whether you grow them on windowsills, in containers, borders, greenhouse or conservatory, expect a good crop of large, tasty bright red fruit which, despite their size, show good resistance to fruit fall. Perfect for pick-your-own at barbecues!
This is confusing – megabite – but for windowsills? The photo does show two large fruit being a handful – and a chunky stem in the background – but how does all that fit on a windowsill? It won’t be me who gets to find out as, with the exception of the kitchen, my house is sill-less. But if anyone has a spare sill and £2.15 for 7 seeds it would be great to find out!
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A browse through a vegetable seed catalogue is like working your way down a luscious long, lunch menu. Finger scrolling across all the possibilties, lingering and hovering a little longer over some, reversing back up to reconsider others. I know restaurants with laminated photos of each dish are not necessarily known to deliver the best gourmet eating – but the passport sized shots of different veg in the catalogues make me want to start ploughing and sowing in the hope of much future chowing.
In the end it’s actually a relief to restrict myself to the T for tomato pages. All those other temptations translate to a lot of hard work!
So what did I find that’s new in the catalogues for this year? Today I’m looking at Sutton’s tomato collection. I’ll look at one new variety of seed in particular and then take another look at the other new seeds and developments in the plants on offer later in the week (there have been some innovations in the grafted range).
The big story is one of the varieties that I’ve sown – F1 Lizzano. This is how it’s described ” Genuine blight resistance! Lizzano, as confirmed by Bangor University is the most blight tolerant variety we have seen. It is a semi-determinate type producing abundant yields of tasty, high quality, bright red, baby cherry sized fruits. It is a vigorous variety with a compact, uniform trailing habit that makes it perfect for patios.”
Not for those who like their patios to be a place of ordered serried ranks though. Lizzano roots may be containable within a pot but she looks like the squatter cousin of a sprawler such as Sungold or Black Cherry, throwing out trusses and seeing where they’ll land. Still if she’s blight resistant and produces fruit as delicious as they do, she will be most welcome.
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I read recently that we humans like stimulation but not change. I am feeling this most definitely in coming to terms with the restyled “Growing Pockets”.
The peat-filled versions had a delightful squidgebility about them. Give their middle a friendly squeeze and you could tell if they needed more water or were just right. Give the coir pockets a squeeze and it’s like what I imagine an embrace with a hairy, sodden door mat to be like. It may read welcome but you are being given the brush off.
It remains to be seen if the tomato seeds feel at home or not. Sown on Sunday night, they will hopefully prove much more adaptable to change than their sower.
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Cobwebs be gone! It’s time for the return of the tomatoes.
I am starting gently. With two varieties – both Bush tomatoes.
Red Alert, as it says on the packet “it’s so early, it will ripen before any chance of blight” and F1 Lizzano “The Tomato Bush”, as it says on the packet “Tomato Success Guaranteed!” ( the ! is Sutton’s not mine). It’s described as Easy to Grow and resistant to tomato ‘blight’.(Sutton’s quote marks, not mine, if I were to misuse punctuation in relation to blight , I’d hold down the asterisk key.)
If anyone might be wondering about the difference buying F1 seed makes to sowing costings – look no futher. Lizzano: £2.99 for 7 seeds ( £3.69 for 6 from T&M), Red Alert: £2.89 for 30 seeds.
In past years I’ve often used Peat Pellets as a quick and mess-free way to sow seeds. This year the inevitable has occured. They have been replaced by a peat free product called a Growing Pocket, a “compressed planting pockets in biodegradable mesh”.
I am pretty sure they are made from compressed coir and my concern was that once “uncompressed” they would become a instantly disintegrating mess. As is coconut’s want – it did shed a lot on hitting the water. But my goodness – superfast expansion. A high rise mattress for a seed in seconds.
I’ve sown 4 Lizzanos and 6 Red Alerts. There will be more varieties but it feels good to have got started.
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Well it’s December and this photo was taken yesterday. It’s last legs without a doubt – but it is December!!
The temperature has really dropped today so I am guessing that week 37 will be the week that never was. But still … what an innings!
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