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Home Grown Tomatoes


hilldweller

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An appeal to all you experianced gardeners out there.

I have a decent greenhouse in the garden and each year I grow about 6 tomato plants. I don't have problems (usually) growing them but I am having problems finding a type of tomato that I can enjoy when I've grown them. I've tried Moneymaker (tasteless), Alicante (bland) and for the last couple of years I've been planting Shirley's.

The Shirleys are O.K. to a point but they have the annoying habit of changing straight from green to a sweet deep red. I like tomatoes that are fleshy, tasty and not too sweet. In the shops you can buy any amount of tomatoes that are an orange rather than red colour and stay that way for days. Is the secret in the growing or is there a variety out there that I can home-grow? I am not talking about the yellow varieties which I find much too sweet.

Any ideas anyone ?

HD

P.S. My usual approach to life is "if it aint broke don't fix it " but I rather think that I like the look of the new look forum.

Well Done Admin !

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It's all a matter of personal taste,there are lots of different varieties.

From what you've said,I think you might like the old variety Ailsa Craig,much beloved of Percy Thrower.Suttons and Thompson and Morgan stock the seeds.

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It's all a matter of personal taste,there are lots of different varieties.

From what you've said,I think you might like the old variety Ailsa Craig,much beloved of Percy Thrower.Suttons and Thompson and Morgan stock the seeds.

Got to agree with PC Infield here.

It really is down to personal taste on things like flavour, sweetness, texture, size and colour BUT there are hundreds of different varieties too many to grow them all and sample the lot so you will have to keep trying until you find one that you particularly like.

After years of growing tomatoes conventionally both outdoor and under glass about 3 years ago we tried to grow a hanging variety from a hanging basket for a change.

The variety we picked, appropriatley called Tumbler, grew well, cropped heavily and produced small cherry tomatoes which were not too sweet, - the kind of tomatoes me and the wife like in a salad or with (but not in) sandwiches.

We have continued to grow this variety along with other more conventional varieties since.

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We once bought some cherry tomatoes from the supermarket. They were the nicest we'd ever had so, when we got to the last few, my wife scooped out the seeds and left them to dry on paper towel in the window for a few weeks.

Next year, she planted them out and they came back just as nice from our own garden.

So my advice is to find what you want in the supermarket and save the seeds. ;-)

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We once bought some cherry tomatoes from the supermarket. They were the nicest we'd ever had so, when we got to the last few, my wife scooped out the seeds and left them to dry on paper towel in the window for a few weeks.

Next year, she planted them out and they came back just as nice from our own garden.

So my advice is to find what you want in the supermarket and save the seeds. ;-)

Now, all the gardening "experts" and seedsmen would warn you against doing this as the modern seeds are F1 or F2 Hybrid varieties which have been specially developed by cross pollenation to be hardy in our climate, to crop well and to be pest and disease resistant as well as loads of other reasons why these hybrid seeds are better than any wild seeds that you can collect from a previous years crop.

Having said that, we all keep seeds back and use them the following year. It's cheaper, you know exactly what the last lot that the seeds came from were like and you only keep enough seeds for the number of plants you want to grow, - not buy a bag of seed when you only want half a dozen plants.

Worth trying with seeds which grow easily, germinate easily and are fairly resistant to weather pests and disease anyway. Tomotos are ideal.

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Can you get Roma Tomatoes? They are not round but long, ours grow to about 3-3½ " long, easy to grow, masses of fruit. Lovely taste and so European!

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Can you get Roma Tomatoes? They are not round but long, ours grow to about 3-3½ " long, easy to grow, masses of fruit. Lovely taste and so European!

We have grown Roma successfully in Britain Thylacine.

As you say they are a very nice tomato although they are more of the "Italian plum tomoto" in appearance.

Unfortunately if I eat more than just a few they tend to give me indigestion but other varieties don't. :(

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