Our tomato plans

I love tomatoes. Really, really love tomatoes. I would eat them every day if they were more affordable out of season, but this summer I plan to indulge myself until I’m sick of the things.

Last year we were complete novice gardeners and made many mistakes, but we were still blessed with an abundance of the aforementioned red fruit. Since we were just getting our feet muddy, so to speak, we went for varieties that were common and readily available; Moneymaker, an heirloom variety with smallish round red fruit, Cherry Sweetie, a cherry tomato, and a couple of sorry no-name specimens rescued from the brink of death courtesy of The Warehouse’s garden centre for 50c each. Despite our ignorance and occasional neglect, these plants somehow thrived and gave us a great harvest right up to the start of winter when the first frosts arrived.

This year I’m ready to experiment a little more – actually, a lot more. I could well be setting myself up for a fall, but I’m going to plant sixteen tomato varieties and see how they turn out. Here are the details (photos all from the internet, hopefully to be replaced with my own when something grows!).

Beefsteak/Paste Tomatoes
Aunt Ruby’s German Green

Aunt Ruby’s German Green is a beautiful green beefsteak with vivid green and gold centres, weighing up to 500g each. It’s recommended for sandwiches and for fried green tomatoes.



Brandywine Red

This is a beefsteak tomato with a sweet rich tomato flavour, and is recommended for sandwiches.



Roma

These are the tomatoes that you find in tins, ready for cooking. We’re planting four of these plants in the hopes that we get enough to make our own tomato sauce for the winter.



Black Tula

A Russian heirloom tomato, this one has mahogany red skin with green shoulders and dark green gel around the seeds. Ugly but, by all accounts, delicious. I've never tried a black tomato, but they are described as having a sweet, spicy, smoky taste.


Mid-Sized Tomatoes
Early Girl

These round red fruits are perfect for slicing, and have excellent texture and flavour.











Better Boy

These large fruits are plump, juicy, and deep red.





Green Zebra

When this one is fully ripe, the fruits are bright green with stripes of lighter green.





Moneymaker

Another heirloom tomato with mid-sized round red fruit. We grew this one last year and it was surprisingly prolific despite being underfed and probably underwatered.


Cherry Tomatoes

Sweetie

We grew these ones last year and were very happy with them – bunches of sweet cherry tomatoes in what almost looked like a blister-pack arrangement, as if somebody in a factory had arranged them that way. Delicious.











Yellow Pear (and matching Red Pear)

Charming little yellow (and red) pear-shaped cocktail tomatoes.



Sungold

Sungold is an English hybrid with super-sweet cherry sized fruits, perfect for eating straight off the plant. They are a golden orange when ripe.



Juliet

These sweet grape-sized tomatoes are recommended for salad.




Sugar Plum

This grape shaped variety produces large red clusters of fruit with exceptional flavour.




Gold Nugget

These round golden tomatoes, one inch in diameter, are sweet, seedless, and ideal for salad.



Baxter’s Early Bush Red

These orange-red salad tomatoes are a cherry type and keep for up to a month in the fridge.




That’s the lot – for now, anyway. And really we don’t have space for any more varieties this year – I’ll be restricted to just one each of most of these as it is. But we’ve got high hopes of a good tomato harvest if I can persuade all the seeds to germinate and grow up healthy and strong, enough for both of us at least and hopefully enough to share as well. I’ll keep you updated!