Topic: Top greenhouse tomatoes 2023

[Deb P]

I did my annual appraisal of my greenhouse toms this morning, just working out which ones have done well so I gather some overripe fruits to save the seeds, and deciding which n’er do wells will not be grown next year!
Pic is my latest bowlful of keepers….so next year I will mostly be growing…..

Rugby; fruits of varying size but mostly dark pink heart shaped fruit, look great in a mixed salad and cook down easily.

Dovenia; medium sized red salad type, good crops and flavour.

Manx Marvel; old variety but very good consistent cropper, medium red fruits

Lovely lush; Big purple/red striped cushions, ok flavour, few seeds

Artisan red and yellow striped; good indoors and outside, feathery foliage, good crops of clusters of striped fruits. My yellow ones outcropped the red by more than double this year, not sure why!

Bush varieties (outdoors)
Latah; heavy crops, varies in size and slightly oval cushion shaped, great flavour, my favourite reliable outdoor cropper.

Burmese sour; a less sweet variety most suited to cooking. They seem a bit fussy on my soil and the cushion shaped fruits seemed to rot quickly when subjected to the heavy rains we had so might do better in a very dry year but with another try!

Fat Jack; new to me this year, huge crop of big beefsteak fruits, very flavoursome

Your favourites this year?

[BarriedaleNick]

I'm still sticking to some old favourites while I get used to conditions here - next year I'll branch out a bit. However the Rio Grandes did amazingly well, Green Zebra as good as ever and Red Stripe did pretty well too. Next year I'll delve into the the seed drawer a little more - hoping I have some Davington Epicure seeds left but I fear not!

[saddad]

Another vote for Green Zebra, but Charlie Green is better...

[Vinlander]

I don't grow many Green Zebra because the first plants I had (~10 years ago as part of a mail-order Heritage collection) weren't vigorous & were quite late to flower & fruit.

I have a better polytunnel now, and I've tried them 2 more times in the last 5 Years. No real change in their performance...

In each try (especially this year) Green Zebra, Sungold & Gardeners delight plants came from the same garden centre, in the same April batch (& all around 15cm tall}, but the results were much the same as my first try - the Green Zebra outdoors or in grew much slower than the others outdoors or in, but even the polytunnel Zebras were noticeably slower than the non-Zebras in open ground.

Obviously that creamy taste in Green Zebras was delicious, but I've found that "Artisan Green Tiger" (had to grow from seed this year) shares that flavour at a similar stage of colour change (yellow stripes on green) but noticeably earlier. (Maybe a fluke, maybe a deliberate back-cross).

I'm still keeping the "ordinary" Green Tigers going, They don't have that creamy taste but they have a rich taste that is very satisfying (they are also sweet & juicy). I can't understand why some people dislike the tougher skin - it's the flavour that counts & they seldom split - some will wrinkle on the vine and produce even more intense flavour.

Do these people refuse to eat Gala apples? I do! - but they are top sellers despite a bitter skin - just sweet & mushy - hardly any apple flavour (Yuk).

I do sometimes spit out the skin of peaches, when it's like a mouthful of dry suede or velvet offcuts, but I still buy them (when I can't get equivalent nectarines).

Cheers.