Grew 10 varieties this year and no disease problems so will report on taste, crop/fruit size and a few cultural notes:
Brandywine: Excellent taste but small crop of very large fruit. Slow to start setting.
Black Russian: Very good taste slightly better crop than Brandywine, large fruit, slow to start setting.
Tamina: Average taste, average size, good crop, set early.
Core de Bue: Very good taste, good crop, large fruit, still flowering!
Sungold: Very sweet but powerful taste, amazing crop of orange coloured cherry-sized fruit, still flowering! Lots of splitting though.
Ferline: Average taste, average crop of average sized fruit.
Suncherry Premium: Excellent taste (not as sweet as Sungold), excellent crop of red cherry-sized fruit. Will be growing this instead of Gardeners Delight in the future.
Legend: Very good taste, good crop of large to very large fruit.
Cristal: Average taste, good crop of deeply coloured medium sized fruit.
Stupice: Unremarkable taste, good crop of medium sized fruit.
Hope the above proves useful to someone.
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
Tried Doctor caroline Pink this year. Good fleshy lovely tasting.
Small Garden Pearl in hanging pots in the greenhouse. Lovely flavour, easy to grow and quite prolific over the whole season.
Ailsa Craig as hubby likes it for eating and cooking.
I got two from a friend: Golden sunrise(I think) which I thought was a Sungold so have been disappointed in lack of taste and furry flesh. Not nice. The other was Black Cherry which my grandson loves(I think he just loves tomatoes) which is also tasty and quite prolific.
Bob, Sungold always splits on the plant. Very thin skins. You can harvest them a bit earlier to avoid it. They're too sweet for my liking, I find the sweetness overpowers whatever other taste they have.
greenfingers, Dr Carolyn Pink is a nice tom. Named for Dr Carolyn Male, an American heirloom tomato legend. It's a stabilised grow-out from a pink fruit that appeared on a Dr Carolyn plant. Dr Carolyn is an ivory-coloured cherry. Yet another example of the fun and games that can happen growing heirloom toms. Sometimes the pure gene pools throw up some interesting hiccups.
Thanks Italiophile - I think I'll try growing a lot of heritage varieties next year and will probably ask you for some recommendations over the Winter. I normally grow Marmande but I was trying several varieties for the first time and had limited space, but they're already back on the 'regular' list. Lots of the ones I grew this year were potato-leaved varieties as I wanted to find out if they suited my palate more than those with 'ordinary' leaves, but can't say I noticed any link between leaf type and taste.
Verdun, the other half loves the sweetness of Sungold, so I'll have to keep growing those but for me the suncherry premium (it's an F1, so not many seeds per packet) was the outstanding find of the varieties I grew for the first time this year.
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
Bob, there's no link between leaf type and flavour beyond Potato Leaves being likely to be heirlooms, hence likely to have more flavour than, say, a Regular Leaf hybrid. The PL shape is a recessive gene, it will disappear if crossed with a RL variety.
There was a school of thought around the heirloom tom traps that PL varieties were, for some reason, more resistant to fungal problems but I've never noticed it.
PM me your details and I'll send you a couple of nice varieties.
Posts
Grew 10 varieties this year and no disease problems so will report on taste, crop/fruit size and a few cultural notes:
Brandywine: Excellent taste but small crop of very large fruit. Slow to start setting.
Black Russian: Very good taste slightly better crop than Brandywine, large fruit, slow to start setting.
Tamina: Average taste, average size, good crop, set early.
Core de Bue: Very good taste, good crop, large fruit, still flowering!
Sungold: Very sweet but powerful taste, amazing crop of orange coloured cherry-sized fruit, still flowering! Lots of splitting though.
Ferline: Average taste, average crop of average sized fruit.
Suncherry Premium: Excellent taste (not as sweet as Sungold), excellent crop of red cherry-sized fruit. Will be growing this instead of Gardeners Delight in the future.
Legend: Very good taste, good crop of large to very large fruit.
Cristal: Average taste, good crop of deeply coloured medium sized fruit.
Stupice: Unremarkable taste, good crop of medium sized fruit.
Hope the above proves useful to someone.
Tried Doctor caroline Pink this year. Good fleshy lovely tasting.
Small Garden Pearl in hanging pots in the greenhouse. Lovely flavour, easy to grow and quite prolific over the whole season.
Ailsa Craig as hubby likes it for eating and cooking.
I got two from a friend: Golden sunrise(I think) which I thought was a Sungold so have been disappointed in lack of taste and furry flesh. Not nice. The other was Black Cherry which my grandson loves(I think he just loves tomatoes) which is also tasty and quite prolific.
Bob, Sungold always splits on the plant. Very thin skins. You can harvest them a bit earlier to avoid it. They're too sweet for my liking, I find the sweetness overpowers whatever other taste they have.
greenfingers, Dr Carolyn Pink is a nice tom. Named for Dr Carolyn Male, an American heirloom tomato legend. It's a stabilised grow-out from a pink fruit that appeared on a Dr Carolyn plant. Dr Carolyn is an ivory-coloured cherry. Yet another example of the fun and games that can happen growing heirloom toms. Sometimes the pure gene pools throw up some interesting hiccups.
I am still happy with Gardeners delight but also grew some other varieties including sun gold and they too are delicious
Thanks Italiophile - I think I'll try growing a lot of heritage varieties next year and will probably ask you for some recommendations over the Winter. I normally grow Marmande but I was trying several varieties for the first time and had limited space, but they're already back on the 'regular' list. Lots of the ones I grew this year were potato-leaved varieties as I wanted to find out if they suited my palate more than those with 'ordinary' leaves, but can't say I noticed any link between leaf type and taste.
Verdun, the other half loves the sweetness of Sungold, so I'll have to keep growing those
but for me the suncherry premium (it's an F1, so not many seeds per packet) was the outstanding find of the varieties I grew for the first time this year.
Bob, there's no link between leaf type and flavour beyond Potato Leaves being likely to be heirlooms, hence likely to have more flavour than, say, a Regular Leaf hybrid. The PL shape is a recessive gene, it will disappear if crossed with a RL variety.
There was a school of thought around the heirloom tom traps that PL varieties were, for some reason, more resistant to fungal problems but I've never noticed it.
PM me your details and I'll send you a couple of nice varieties.
Oh drat and double drat - I just did a huge long post about our tomatoes this year and something happened and I lost it - I need another coffee!!!
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I'd go with a brandy.
For breakfast???
Well, if I must................ it's too wet to wield the secateurs today.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.