Alicante
Alicante was joint 4th in my seed poll along with Moneymaker. Of the 23 seed sites I searched it could be bought from 11.
This is what the seed suppliers had to say:
To eat, Alicante is:
- Fleshy, good flavour, good tasting, full flavour
- Uniform size, medium size
- Red
To Grow, Alicante is:
- Cordon Interderminate
- Outdoor or glass, cold greenhouse
- High yield, heavy cropping, heavy crops
- Matures early, quite early
- Resistant to, free from greenback, no greenback
- Most popular amateur tomat0, money maker type, improved money maker type ,classic older variety, easy to grow
To buy Alicante:
Packets ranged between 50 and 120 seeds per packet. Average seed priced worked out at .016 pence per seed.
In the seed catalogues they rank equal. How would you score them? Interesting that the catalogues describe Alicante as improved Moneymaker but that they are both equally avaliable ?
Would you choose Alicante over Moneymaker? Or Moneymaker over Alicante?
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Stumbled on your web site looking for extra tips on growing tomatoes. I decided this year to try growing some veg from seed (never grown veg ever before), included in this was tomatoes. I chose the Alicante variety as I like going to Spain. Without thinking I planted the whole packet in a large seed tray on the 23 February and nurtured them in my conservatory. Hey presto a couple of weeks later, or thereabouts, they ALL popped their heads out of the compost. I potted them on as it said on the packet and placed them all on the shelves of a plastic grow-house. Now (4th June) I have 6 large plants in the grow-house, one is 4′ tall already with 4 trusses, 10 in 9″ pots dotted throughout the garden and roughly 15 – 20 in a purpose dug sunny corner of my garden and I still have 25 in 3″ pots which I don’t have the heart to throw away. ALL of my friends, family and even friends of friends have been given tomato plants from me. I know for the future to think ahead. I didn’t think for 1 minute that I would end up with 120 tomato plants. However, I am extremely pleased with the results and will be using extensive recipes (fingers crossed) to use up all of my tomatoes as they ripen. Keep looking on the bright side!!
Hello Anne,
Thank you for getting in touch and for letting me know about your tomato growing experience! 120 , that’s amazing.
What a fantastic result. I too had no confidence that I would be able to grow anything from seed. And in fact when I talked to some very experienced tomato growers and they said they bought plants – I had just assumed that they would grow them from seed – I wondered if I’d done the right thing ! But I too have found it so rewarding to grow something from scratch – well seed !
I’d love to know how the plants progress and what recipes turn out to be your favourite. Thank you for stopping by .
Sally
Live in SE England nd still green, When will they be ripe?
How frustrating ! My Alicante have been slow to ripen as well and have just done so in the past week or so and I still have a lot of green fruit on that variety . So fingers crossed yours will start to turn this week. It’s been a nice sunny weekend so that should help.