sungold tomatoes

[claybasket]

My Lotty nabour gave me a taste of the sungold tomato it was so sweet lovely flavour now I know why folk love then will be ditching beefeaters and moneymaker time I got a bit more adventurous, sungold sungold sungold 

[claybasket]

[galina]

My Lotty nabour gave me a taste of the sungold tomato it was so sweet lovely flavour now I know why folk love then will be ditching beefeaters and moneymaker time I got a bit more adventurous, sungold sungold sungold 

They are nice and sweet, but would you like nothing but little cherry tomatoes after a while?  Or would you really  lust after a nice mid-size salad tomato.  There are so many out there that are much better than 'moneyspinner'. 

[claybasket]

yes Galinda your right I do love a big salad tomatoe got carried away there silly me

[lottie lou]

Well a few years ago i grew a Roma type F1 grapeish size tomato.  Liked it so much I saved seeds and the following year I had 1 bright yellow tomato on the plant with the rest of them red.  I was so taken in by the yellow tomato I ate the darned thing.  Anyway to cut a long story short I tried my F2s again this year and have got some lovely yellow tomatoes.  Will save seeds so would you like to try the F3s from this?  Also have Polen which is a cherry size - tomato shapes are either egg, pear and a lightbulb shape (if you understand what I mean).  Would you like a few of these? 

[claybasket]

Thank you Lottie Lou your tomato seeds would be wonderful ,the light bulb tomato sounds exciting .I did have a strange beef eater it had 4/5tomato all growing together very strange all miss shaped poor thing, but we still ate it 

[cornykev]

My garden toms have only just turned red this week, the OH is the only one in this house who likes them and Tigerella has been her favourite for years, until last year when I grew Sungold, needless to say she has a new favourite.  PS I save the seeds from both.   

[galina]

Thank you Lottie Lou your tomato seeds would be wonderful ,the light bulb tomato sounds exciting .I did have a strange beef eater it had 4/5tomato all growing together very strange all miss shaped poor thing, but we still ate it 

You get this quite frequently with beefsteak tomatoes on early flowers.  Did you notice the flower by any chance?  This tomato would have come from a very large flower, perhaps a bit like this:
http://marksvegplot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/tomatoes-progress-report.html
scroll down to the flower close-up.

[macmac]

Sungold is my favourite but we grow several varieties. We grow a greenhouse beef called Faworyt which is pinky red and wonderfully juicy.
Thanks for the tip on saving seed from Sungold I thought they were F1s so have never done it before but will do now 

[terrier]

I may be mistaken here, but I seem to remember reading on a forum (probably this one) some time ago that 'Sungold' was a generic name for some yellow tomatoes and so the contents of any individual packet of sungold seed could vary in output, with tastes ranging from sweet and tangy to quite bland.

[claybasket]

Hi Galina the flowers were rather large, and looked just like that chaps flowers I thought there were to many flowers on one truss and perhaps I should have took some off and gave them more room ,I also did Monty Dons experiment with the tomatoes it very little compost in the buckets, that's the way the professionals grow them grow then ,I had to water them 2/3times a day and feeding them everyday ,I thought it was a waist of 6 tomato good plants as some only had 3/4 tomatoes on them and they looked stressed very stretched but it was worth a try, the better results were the tomatoes it the soil at the lottie  

[lottie lou]

Don't watch Monty Don but how much compost did he exactly use?  Grew a couple of beefheard toms last year but only ended up with one small tommie to each plant.  Needless to say the seeds were consigned to the bin.  PM me your addy and when my seeds are ready will send to you.

[realfood]

Sungold is an F1 so you will not get the same if you save the seeds.

[claybasket]

Don't watch Monty Don but how much compost did he exactly use?  Grew a couple of beefheard toms last year but only ended up with one small tommie to each plant.  Needless to say the seeds were consigned to the bin.  PM me your addy and when my seeds are ready will send to you.

well it was the black buckets and it was about 6in of compost but Monty was a bit unsure so he decide to add more but 6in was the amount the pro recommended  and that what I did not a good result 

[Robert_Brenchley]

Seeds from F1's will produce similar plants to the original. Select over a few generations and you'll have your own variety, which is likely to be as good as the original, and a lot cheaper.

[saddad]

Sungold is the only F1 we will grow... "Black Cherry" is almost a s good.. and you can save seed easily... I currently have over 60 "old" varieties but can only grow out about 25 a year...   

[Big Gee]

Sungold is an F1 so you will not get the same if you save the seeds.

I've been growing Sungold for a number of years, in my humble opinion it is exceptional in the taste department. The only other cherry I grow is Gardener's Delight, which I have always found to be a fantastic cropper and sweet tasting, but on balance I think Sungold has the edge.

I've always paid through the nose for a meagre number of Sungold seeds, because I have assumed that being an F1 they would not produce 'true' if grown from kept seeds. However this season I discovered a few plants growing wild (they had obviously fallen into the polytunnel border and self seeded there). Curious to find out what they were I've grown them on. To my surprise the four 'wild' plants that turned out to be Sungold are now in full fruit & they are identical to the original! Taste, colour, size and crop yield is identical to the packeted seeds I've also grown.

This rather bucks the F1 trend and opens up a future of opportunity to save money (assuming they keep on coming true). Has anyone else had the same experience?

[galina]

Fascinating Big Gee!  If I was a seed company and had dehybridised Sungold successfully, my seed production would be much cheaper!!!  And my takings would be greatly improved ............

There have been many attempts by amateur and semi-professional breeders to dehybridise Sungold, but it does not seem to be a trivial undertaking, because apparently there are more than two varieties involved in breeding the true Sungold hybrid.  The 'recipe' is a closely guarded secret.

I am comparing a commercial F1 plant to several of the 'dehybridised' ones this year.  For starters the dehybridised ones I have seed for are variable, not quite stable (yet perhaps!), but the closest in appearance does not quite have the flavour.  I have one plant that is now a red plum shape (an early variant that I followed up for a few years because it was very pretty initially - golden little plums - and very tasty).  The other two plants are small cherries, one more yellow, the other more red than Sungold,  both not quite as flavourful, still very nice though.

Do follow up yours please Big Gee - you never know 

[Big Gee]

Fascinating Big Gee!  If I was a seed company and had dehybridised Sungold successfully, my seed production would be much cheaper!!!  And my takings would be greatly improved ............

There have been many attempts by amateur and semi-professional breeders to dehybridise Sungold, but it does not seem to be a trivial undertaking, because apparently there are more than two varieties involved in breeding the true Sungold hybrid.  The 'recipe' is a closely guarded secret.

I am comparing a commercial F1 plant to several of the 'dehybridised' ones this year.  For starters the dehybridised ones I have seed for are variable, not quite stable (yet perhaps!), but the closest in appearance does not quite have the flavour.  I have one plant that is now a red plum shape (an early variant that I followed up for a few years because it was very pretty initially - golden little plums - and very tasty).  The other two plants are small cherries, one more yellow, the other more red than Sungold,  both not quite as flavourful, still very nice though.

Do follow up yours please Big Gee - you never know 

Possibly more luck than judgement! But this time round they seem as near as d**n it to the first generation original. Whether that will continue is another matter. At least it won't be as bitter a pill to swallow as forking out good dosh for 5 tiny seeds that you hunt frantically for when you drop one on the floor!

We'll see next year, because this year I'll keep some seeds - rather than depend on some 'volunteers' in the borders!

[claybasket]

Hi my OH found Sungold seeds half price at local garden centre Thomson and Morgan well got them home had a look ,WHAT only 10 seeds the right price was £3 go them half price £1-50 going to comper there taste with saved seeds they must be making a fortune well that's my moan to- day

[cornykev]

My Sungold saved seeds were just as Sweet as last years tommies according to the OH.