Im sadly coming to the end of my tomatoes in Spain!! (the worst bit about gardening pulling up spent plants) been picking from May though shouldnt complain!!! I'm now looking at what varieties to grow next year so here's the question:
What's your top 3 tomatoes for flavour??
This year for me, SunGold won hands down. Intense sweet tomato flavour and long trusses of over 20 fruit per truss. Still picking them although most never make it back from the Lottie... ;D
green zebra + black russian + white beauty (all lovely colours as well) ;D
mine this year is an old favourite - 'Ailsa Craig'. It has been the one that has split least - a lovely flavour too. And a good cropper. It's an old variety, but I still haven't found one that's beaten it. And I've tried many this year.
2nd is Gardener's Delight , but I like bigger tomatoes as well as the wee cherry ones.
3rd Sungella - lovely flavour like Sungold but bigger.
Have to keep looking though ;D
Terri
Impossible for me to pick only three. So many have different uses. The tiny cherries eaten by the handful like sweeties and thrown whole over a pizza or bowl of wilted spinach. The plums for making lovely sweet rich sauces, the 'normal' slicing tom, for in a sandwich, salad, pizza, or for pulping down, or just cut in half, sprinkled with our local salt and eaten like an apple. Then there is those big squidgy beefsteaks! Just amazing sliced thickly and gently fried until they are almost melting and served on a hot slice of well buttered toast! Mouth watering now!
Sungold, the only F1 I grow, and two heritage vars., Potato leaf White and Red Peach... from HSL...
;D
This year
1. Brandywine
2. Sungella
3. Snow White
Far too many to mention.
Those who know me will know I hammer on about Black Russian,Caspian Pink,Green Zebra, Brandywine etc.
But I am going to put in a plug for `Nepal`-I`ve been saving the seed for 10 years now and for all I know it might have crossed in that time -huge crop of really meaty, tasty fruit
Mine are refusing to ripe so I have tasted only a few.
So far I'm very impressed with Black from Tula. Wonderful flavour - not sweet but smoky and refreshing.
Edited to add Sunbelle to the list. They are small plum sized yellow tom. Very sweet, similar taste to sungold and quite reliable.
I'd pick Taxi, a yellow variety. Early, prolific and tasty.
I only grew four kinds this year.
Gardeners Delight: as moaned about elsewhere, I’m fed up with the splitting, and I’m sure they weren’t as tasty as they have been before. Going to give them a miss next year.
Sungold, fantastic taste and very few split.
Roma, very heavy yield, no splitting, making splendid pasta sauce. Someone has kindly sent me some seeds of La Roma, which is said to produce seven times the yield! Anyone have these?
Harlequin, another F1, small plum, good taste and none have split. Bought some more seeds already as Wyevale are selling them off at 25p a packet.
I have a beef tomato lined up for next year, but am looking for a tasty medium-sized one to fill the gap, so watching this topic with interest.
MMMmmmmmm I love plum tomatoes! Grew rio grande this year and made loads of jars up!!! so easy to skin. i'll grow 20 plants next year!!!
Hi there
I have grown five varieties this year and I think that the Sungold is fantastic and the best. After reading this thread I think that I will be on the lookout for Tigrella seeds (same taste as Sungold but bigger.) Yummy
My Harbiner was a good cropper with a decent flavour and am still busy harvesting and processing for the freezer. My Marmade were also OK but my San Marzano were very dissapoininting early on in the season. A lot of the fruit suffered from blossom end rot (despite them all being in the green house with the good cropping Harbiner??) but the majority of the crop which are ripening now seem to be doing OK. Don't know if I will try and grow them next year again. Also grew tumbling toms in a basket but since tasting Sungold have gone off them.
Oh well, there's always next year.
Jitterbug
There is no way we could be limited to three varieties of tomatoes.
We grow cherry varieties, plum types and beefsteaks.
Of the cherries, we grow Gardener's Delight, Yellow Nugget, Yellow Perfection, and some other yellow varieties I can't remember the names of.
Plum varieties are Olivade, San Marzano, Rio Grande, Black Plum.
Beefsteak we grow Brandywine, Supersteak, Black Russian. We also grow a variety called Marion (seeds from Unwins). The fruits are probably a bit too small to be classed as a beefsteak, but they are perfectly formed, to showbench standard, and most importantly delicious!!
Nope, couldn't be resstricted to three varieties. And it won't be long before the 2007 catalogues will be dropping through the letterbox, with even more tempting varieties.
Just need the space!!
valmarg
Quote from: greyhound on August 28, 2006, 01:20:29
I...Roma, very heavy yield, no splitting, making splendid pasta sauce. Someone has kindly sent me some seeds of La Roma, which is said to produce seven times the yield! Anyone have these? ...
Not seen La Roma, but agree that Roma (mine were called Roma VF) do give a heavy yield, got 9kg per plant average last year. This year though, have tried another called Incas, and am very impressed - the fruit are much larger than Roma - although there are slightly fewer on the plant I think the yield will be similar.
Getting back to the topic (sorry, Biscombe!) what is the flavour of Incas like? Roma of course is nothing special on the taste front, I grow it for cooking.
Is Incas a bush tom?
just harvested auroras and they're completely delicious! I had an orange tom last year and cannot for the life of me remember what it was, but it was heavenly. Might have been a ??? This year I've written things down in a journal.