comparing tom varieties - quality, taste and yield

wallbash

Gardener's Delight are in the green house .
But also have a number of hanging baskets with 'Tumblers'
Has the advantage of keeping them away from the slugs/snails.

Luckily leaving the kids at home, when we fly off on hols , with stern instructions to keep them well watered.

purplepardalis

I'd love to join in as well. I love tomatoes and can't wait for mine to grow so I can stop spending a fortune in the super market for mine.

I'm growing a few varieties - off the top of my head - gardener's delight, money maker, golden sunrise, marmande, tigerella.... and maybe one or two more.

I was organised when sowing the seeds and they were labelled then but now they're all mixed up so until the fruit grow I won't know!

I have 6 plants in the greenhouse in growbags. They're all growing like mad. I have 6 more plants outside in growbags - not as big but they were sown later. I have two more plants of about 8 inches that I'm thinking about bringing indoors to see how they do. It's like a yummy science project.

I don't have many flowers in total yet and I have about 3 pea sized fruit in all. I'm sure I'm being impatient but I worry I won't end up with much. And my greenhouse plants are almost touching the ceiling - they are on benches. Not sure what to do - will they need to grow much higher? My cucumbers are the same (here I am mentioning my cucumbers again).

I'll update with my progress and photos!

mardatha

I tried one outside and it shrivelled up and cried, so I brought it back in and gave it a cuddle

Money_maker

I used to always grow Gardeners Delight - til I discovered Sungold. Orange skinned with a high sugar content, it now knocks the spots off g/d. Have about 6 sungold plants and 2 g/delight this year.

point3

F1 Sweet Olive (cherry) and Lldi (yellow cherry) in the greenhouse produce numerous, very tasty fruits - they get picked off and popped like sweeties! Cerise cherry toms and Garden Pearl do well outdoors, but aren't as tasty.

F1 Totem produce very vigorous, stocky plants and do well outdoors - the fruits are small, but not cherry-sized. The downside is that they are bland tasting. They're very easy for beginners and children and do well in patio pots. They seem to be more resistant to blight too - they survived when Roma, San Marzano and Marmande varieties all succumbed.

Primrose

This year I'm growing about 30 tomato plants for a mixture of eating raw, and cooking down to make sauce/puree, so will be very interested in all your comments.
I'm growing a mixture of Alisa Craig, Moneycross, Ferline, Gardeners Delight, Cherry, Sungold, Roma and Black Russian as well as 3 Tumbling Toms. I've never tried the Black Russian or Roma before so the jury is still out on them. Of all the varieties I've grown, if I had to pick one for flavour alone, it would be Gardeners Delight. Nothing better than picking a few sun-ripened fruits straight off the vine and eating them whilst still warm. I'm trying desperately to remember which variety is which as some got mixed up when I was planting them out, so harvesting will be an interesting experience.
It's quite difficult to differentiate the different varieties just by looking at them. The 'cherry-type' tomatoes seem to grow taller than the standard varieties, and the leaves on the Black Russian plants look slightly different.

Lotus-eater

I love Gardeners Delight, I've been saving the seeds from the best tasting toms for a few years and I reckon (maybe I had better wait until this years crop before I go overboard about them ) that I have some of the best tasting fruit in the country....... or at least a small area of it

I also love Ferline, lovely tasting fruit, big and blight resistant, perfect in salad. Expensive seed though, I buy them when seeds are cheap.

This year I am also growing San Mazano 2 on the advice of a Italian friend of mine, for cooking and freezing. Having tried to cook and freeze normal tomatoes and not being impressed, I'm trying proper cooking tomatoes.

Also I am growing Purple Ukraine, don't know how they taste yet though.

Garden Pearl, love these, but these are new seeds, not saved, so we will have to see.

Ones I don't grow anymore. Moneymaker.... just why? Bland bland bland. Black Russian cherry, didn't like they look of them and difficult to see when they were ripe. Marmanade, bland, difficult to ripen, not many fruit per vine. Red tumbling tomatoes. got fed up with the quite bland taste. Legend, nowhere near as good as the other blight resistant, Ferline.

Primrose

An interesting question for all you tomato growers - does anybody weigh the crops they get from each variety of tomato to see what the average crop yield is?
Because I like to try and stock up the freezer for the year ahead with tomato purree/sauce I obviously always hope for a good crop and wonder whether I would get more cooking tomatoes from a cherry tomato plant type like Gardeners Delight, or one of the bigger varieties? Any thoughts?

MRSMCAWBER

Hi Primrose
Im planning on weighing and counting my fruits (for the same reason as you)-I have a chart ready to fill in -yes Im THAT sad :rotfl:luckily I was organised with marking what went where
I roasted and froze loads last year and they provided us with the base for a pasta bake virtually every week... there would have been more -but "someone" kept eating them with a spoon as they were roasted

Taye

MRSMCAWBER wrote: »

Hi Primrose
Im planning on weighing and counting my fruits (for the same reason as you)-I have a chart ready to fill in -yes Im THAT sad :rotfl:luckily I was organised with marking what went where
I roasted and froze loads last year and they provided us with the base for a pasta bake virtually every week... there would have been more -but "someone" kept eating them with a spoon as they were roasted

how do you count and weigh the ones that pop uncontollably into your mouth while your trying to harvest them?