This year’s ‘family portrait’ of home-grown tomatoes!
They don’t have to be red – growing the most colourful tomatoes is easy these days, with reliable new and tried-and-tested heritage varieties. Like most people, my crop of tomatoes has been extremely late, due to the cool and wet summer – even the indoor varieties. Of the two outdoor varieties, Tigerella performed really well, with a heavy crop. Unfortunately, the other one, Al Fresco, was pretty hopeless.
Top of the pile (it always is) was Rosella, far and away the best-tasting tomato I’ve ever grown. The deep dusky pink fruit with greenish shoulders has a slightly tart, tangy, almost smoky taste. They crop quite late – I’ve still been picking them in early November in the greenhouse.
As ever, most of my indoor tomatoes are cherries, apart from the average-sized Green Zebra (I love it, my family hate it – it’s a Marmite tomato) and Kings of Colour. The latter is a collection of four colours – Red, Pink, Yellow and Orange. They have a good flavour and crop well.
Growing the most colourful tomatoes – new varieties
Of this year’s new varieties (Bliss, Toddler and Black Moon – all available from www.thompson-morgan.com), Bliss was everyone’s taste favourite, despite succumbing to a bit of early blossom end rot. Both of the others tasted good too, apart from a word of warning – you assume because they’re black that they’re ripe – wait until they go red at the base!
With climate change on all of our minds, 15 years ago, I wouldn’t have considered growing tomatoes in NE England. Now, providing the variety is right, you can get a decent crop in a sheltered, sunny spot in pots.
One problem this year was that some of the outdoor fruit was affected by rot, no doubt due to the very wet and cool conditions. Thankfully, no blight though!
