Finally - I had to make my choices and commit!
I have 12 different packets of seeds from three suppliers. Four are old favourites. Eight I will be growing for the first time. All will get sown tomorrow – from when it will be six weeks till May 11th. Locally, the latest frost last year was May 12th – hard enough that some growers who’d already put out their tender plants, lost them all. So my plan is to have plants ready to harden off mid-May.
My varieties this year are (descriptions courtesy of the suppliers’ catalogues):
From Heirloom Tomatoes -
White Wonder: An excellent producer of mild tasting creamy white coloured tomatoes weighing five to six ounces each. The white colour is seen inside and out giving the White Wonder tomato an ivory white flesh. It has quite a distinct flavour…something akin to a cross between an un-sweet tomato and a honeydew melon.The result is a refreshing blend and one which is particularly good for those who prefer a less sweet tomato to accompany savory dishes. Can be grown either under glass or in a sheltered outside plot.
Red Pear: First found in literature as far back as 1863, but has somehow been overlooked by tomato growers, unlike its close relative, the Baby Yellow Pear, which is as popular as ever. The Red Pear is actually fuller flavour than the yellow variety, but its shape and size are very much the same – about half an inch long and cute as daisies. Grown alongside the Baby Yellow Pear, intertwined and tangled together, they look an amazing sight on any patio or in any greenhouse.
Baby Yellow Pear: A quaint little cherry tomato with tons of flavour on a highly productive, shortish four foot vine. Recommended, especially if grown for visual effect alongside Red Pear, its cousin.
Pineapple: One of those tomatoes which come late in the season and which are sparsely populated on a medium height vine. But boy are they worth the effort! Ideally grown to produce fruit when your other tomatoes have finished, the flavour of this beauty is bound to impress!
From Thompson & Morgan -
Balconi Yellow and Balconi Red: A sweet cherry variety with bushy, trailing growth. Perfect as a basket plant, one plant filling a 30cm (12in) basket with ease. Extremely decorative as well as productive. Easy to grow, plants do not require any side-shooting or special care.
Sungold F1 Hybrid: The sweetest tomato ever! Richly cascading trusses of bite-sized, deep orange fruit with a very special flavour. They are also thin-skinned and remain ripe and suitable for picking over a long period. Easy to grow indoors or out.
Suncherry Premium F1 Hybrid: The sweetest tasting, shiny, red-skinned, cherry variety avaliable making the perfect complement to our ever popular orange-skinned Sungold. Ripens early and produces a huge crop of bite-sized red fruits throughout the summer.
Tigerella: The finest of the supermarket preferred sized tomatoes we’ve (T&M) grown. Completely greenback free, crops heavily and over three weeks earlier than Moneymaker. Grows well outdoors or in a greenhouse in all areas, has a rich tangy flavour, uniquely its own – and the eye appeal of those clearly defined red and yellow stripes!
From Medwyn’s of Anglesey -
Chocolate Cherry: A new American bred variety…a very sweet tomato with a thin skin that’s well worth growing.
Dometica RZ: A new improved selection that was introduced last year with fantastic reports coming back regarding its flavour. Round in shape and suitable for summer cropping. It’s very productive and the tomatoes are of excellent quality and great for the show bench.
Fire Bell: As Santa has now been discontinued, Fire Bell is a perfect replacement. The plant is vigorous and indeterminate having amazing long double trusses full of bright red baby plum shaped fruit with sweet juicy flesh. The fruit do not fall off and are rarely bothered by blossom end rot.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello,
I’ve been wondering when you’d be telling us this year’s lineup! I’ve read your blog from start to “finish” over the last week or so, and loved it! I’m actually using you as a reference – checking my seedlings’ progress against yours, week by week. Sadly, I’m not growing any of the same varieties as you this year, but I guess that makes it more informative.
Seriously, people tell me I’ve become obsessive about tomatoes – maybe we should set up a support group!
Thanks for all your help so far.
Hello. Thank you so much for reading(!) and for getting in touch. Am so pleased you enjoyed it. I had to immediately hop over to your blog to see what was growing there! My goodness – amazing. Great varieties and so many plants! You have some of my favourites from the past couple of years – Black Cherry, Cream Sausage, Snowberry and Gardener’s Delight. And some varieties that I am really looking forward to hearing your view on. And I will be waiting with bated breath (but maybe not an empty glass!!!) to see how you get on with Chateaux Riesentraube!
I’ve sown today so my week 1 will begin next week – so I will now be comparing to how yours are doing! I’m hoping for Bountiful Harvests for us all!
I’m honoured you looked! I chose some of those varieties based on your recommendations – I’d never even *heard* of cream sausage before! I’ll keep an eye on blossom end rot on that one in particular (I had a lot of that last year, without realising I could do anything about it). I am growing far too many, of course, but once I’ve given half a dozen to various friends and family, and possibly lost some to accident or disease (none so far, touch wood), I’m hoping to sell the rest to make up my costs.
As far as the wine is concerned, all the accounts I’ve read are… equivocal at best. But I love making fruit wines, so it was a must-grow. I don’t suppose there can be much difference between Riesentraube wine and any other variety, but I’ll do it by the book this year.
Incidentally, after your excellent reviews of all the suppliers, do you know there are loads of tomato seeds available on eBay? I got all the ones I bought this year from suppliers on there – I counted over 160 varieties available a few weeks ago. And they seem okay – they have germinated, at least. Later in the season, there will be plant listings too – I’ve bought some good stuff in the past (tropicals, mostly).
I’m up to 200+ seedlings with today’s arrivals – eep!
Good luck germinating. Here’s to a great tomato season!
I never think of Ebay re seeds! – I’ll take a look. I do remember going to a Q&A session at RHS Wisley and a lady in the audience asked a question about determinate/indeterminate plants and if it mattered/not if you weren’t sure which your varieties were – and when quizzed a bit closer she ‘fessed up that she’d been up very late one night and couldn’t resist buying something like a bag of a thousand tomato seeds for a very good price! Even the experts looked a bit faint at the idea of that number of seeds!
Glad to read that Black Cherry has germinated – it’s a great tomato!
Thanks for posting your varieties, It’ll be interesting, as always, to follow your progress. ‘White Wonder’ sounds particularly interesting. Twelve varieties is a lot – I expect you’ll have plenty of uses for those lovely fruits as you harvest them. Giving the surpluses away to friends is always satisfying, and I expect the show-bench will be a-waiting…
I’m going with the four varieties I grew last year (Black Cherry, Gardener’s Delight, Lettuce Leaf and Gold Medal, plus ‘Sunstream’ a la Tesco. And I can’t wait to see if my flourishing mystery plant is ‘Market King’, which I’ll plant more seeds of, ’cause you never know…
The number of varieties and plants always seems manageable at the beginning and when they are out in pots in the garden it’s fine as well. It’s the inbetween stages when they need potting on whilst being grown indoors before being hardened off etc which I always find the trickiest – which is part of the reason for only starting with 2 seeds of each so that I don’t trip over fledgling tomato plants everywhere.
I like your line-up and am really pleased you are growing Black Cherry – so I can feel I am growing it by proxy. I really wasn’t sure about having to go without – but in the interests of research I thought I should try another dark variety – and hence Chocolate Cherry took it’s place – I hope it’s a worthy shoe-stepper into !