Sunday, November 1, 2009

Tomatoes for next year

I've just had a naughty/fun time on internet choosing and buying tomato seeds for next year. This year as a beginner I only had Gardeners' Delight and Moneymaker. The Gardeners' Delight were brilliant, they fruited copiously and produced wonderfully sweet cherry tomatoes. Moneymaker I thought were somewhat bland. So I've had to do homework on different sorts of tomatoes and try to whittle down the choice to a managable and affortable (?) selection. Flavour is paramount, but I also wanted to try some heritage varieties and try to prolong the fruiting season. So I wanted flavoursome plum tomatoes, a stripey 'ordinary' tomato, 3 varieties of cherry tomato (different colours), a best-seller at French markets tomato, an early fruiting variety that does well in low temperatures, a long keeper (that ripens very slowly over a couple of months once picked, so good for extending the season), stuffing tomatoes, that are big enough to jam stuff into and won't fall apart in the oven, and finally beefsteak tomatoes. What I have ordered are:
San Marzano (plum tomato), Red Zebra (red and yellow stripey tomato), Sungold cherry tomato, Black Cherry (with winey flavours apparently) and Gardener's Delight again, Super Marmande (the juicy, sunny, eyes-closed-and-you're-at-a-French-market tom from Provence - hope it won't be too unhappy in Rotterdam!), Sophie's Choice (an heirloom early tomato from Canada), Striped Stuffer (baseball size!), Caspian Pink (a beefsteak tom weighing in at about 340 g, which seems huge and is meant to be one of the best tasting toms on the market!).
It will be such fun seeing how they all do next year!