comparing tom varieties - quality, taste and yield

MissMoneypenny

DownTheGarden wrote: »

Gold Cherry F1 sister of suncherry premium claims to be better than sungold - we will see.
Black Krim spotted at a plant fair - Sarah Raven recommended it in her seed list so bought one to test out.

I bought tomato seeds from Sarah Raven this year
Black Krim - never tried it before, but the fruits are nearly ready now and all looking good so far. I did read on the internet somewhere that they have to be watered evenly to stop the fruits splitting.
Sungold - never tried them before. Some should be ready to eat this week.
And my favourite - supersweet 100.

We have had huge hailstones today, about the size of mint imperials, with the biggest hailstones being about 3x a mint imperial. The tomatoes really took a battering. The sungolds and black krims stayed on their plants and about 10 of the (green) supersweets tomatoes were forced off their plants. The few tomato leaves that were broken off, were all from the supersweet 100s. I thought the huge Black Krims would have been on the floor, but they statyed on their plants. Sarah Raven said these Russian tomatoes could cope in bad weather. I'm in the SE btw.

mardatha

Next year I'm going to try Russian varieties - they will do well up here in the short growing season. Mine are all inside, wouldnt survive a minute outside with our wind. The yellow pear ones are a wee bit of a disappointment, there's only 2 on a big tall plant.

ceridwen

Of course Mardatha - another possibility for you would be to find out what part of America equates to your bit of Britain and grow the same varieties as they grow there.

Does anyone have a link to work out what American growing Zone equates to our particular part of Britain?

foreign_correspondent

mardatha wrote: »

Next year I'm going to try Russian varieties - they will do well up here in the short growing season.

I dont know i have purple russian and it looks terrible - really sickly looking plant, I was expecting something more robust - I am very dissapointed!

Lotus-eater

Well FC, I have purple ukraine, I don't know if they are the same but mine looks horrible as well! All 6 of them.
The leaves are all curled, spindly and that's the ones in the greenhouse, the one outside looks even worse.
Doesn't seem to have stopped them setting and growing fruit though.

foreign_correspondent

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Well FC, I have purple ukraine, I don't know if they are the same but mine looks horrible as well! All 6 of them.
The leaves are all curled, spindly and that's the ones in the greenhouse, the one outside looks even worse.
Doesn't seem to have stopped them setting and growing fruit though.

aha - perhaps we should compare photos! I will take some this week and post them on here.. mine are setting fruit too, but I dont think I will get many off them.

Primrose

I also have 3 Purple Russian which I 'rescued' from a garden centre in a rather dried up condition because I wanted to try this variety and didn't have any seed for them this year. They've perked up and are flowering but still arn't anywhere near what I expect a healthy tomato plant's foliage to look like. As it's the first time I've grown them I'm not sure whether they're naturally like this. Looks like we're all going to have an interesting time ahead seeing them come to fruition. It's useful to compare notes. Helps us to understand that maybe it's not our bad husbandry of the plants after all.

MissMoneypenny

foreign_correspondent wrote: »

I dont know i have purple russian and it looks terrible - really sickly looking plant, I was expecting something more robust - I am very dissapointed!

The leaves on my Black Krim's look all shriveled up. I grew several from seed and they all look the same, so I assumed they are meant to be like that? I seeded them early and they are all full of huge tomatoes.

MissMoneypenny

I ate my first sungold this morning. Very nice, but I still prefer the supersweet 100s I think.

Those huge hailstones that fell yesterday afternoon have made huge holes in the courgette leaves and shredded the sweetcorn leaves. Apart from that, even the french beans have recovered in the sun today and they looked really sorry for themselves yesterday.

MissMoneypenny

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Well FC, I have purple ukraine, I don't know if they are the same but mine looks horrible as well! All 6 of them.
The leaves are all curled, spindly and that's the ones in the greenhouse, the one outside looks even worse.
Doesn't seem to have stopped them setting and growing fruit though.

All my Black Krims are outside in the SE and all look as you have described them. Lots of massive fruits on them though that all look healthy.