Tomatoes

Tomatoes are a must-have in our garden, and in our climate we have a good chance of tomato success. Our major issues are usually around mildew, due to summer rain and humid conditions. Last year was a bit disappointing all round, as we not only dealt with the usual wet summer conditions, but also had some kind of viral something-or-0ther (of the nasty kind) infect most of our tomatoes...they still produced fruit, but some was no good, and there was probably less over all than we'd expect from our 18 odd plants. Our early tomatoes lacked flavour, but things improved as the summer progressed (the dripper line we put in probably helped!). I also tried several varieties that I'd used in North QLD, but found they weren't as good in these conditions. So this year, we won't be doing any Brandywine - they split in damp conditions, so we hardly got to eat any last year. Just not a smart choice on my part.

This year, we are going to be having:

San Marzano - a roma tomato, that I used in Nth QLD and found to have good flavour and more pulp than the usual romas I've previously come across - it made some fabulous soup.

Cocktail Cherry - these are a mix of cherry tomatoes from Kings Seeds. I love cherry tomatoes so this way I didn't have to choose which sort to get!

Uncle Roald's Super Tomatoes - these are from seed handed down by my great-uncle. They are a fairly standard supermarket sized tomato, only taste better!

Principe Borghese - I'm putting in just 2 plants of this, as the fruit were not what I'd expected last year, but I thought I'd better give them another shot incase the viral disease affected things badly and it turns out I like them...they did make nice dried tomatoes so I will at least use them for that again, if I don't eat everything first.

Here are the first batch waiting to be taken up to the 'big garden' and planted out.

Amy

Wednesday, 20th October, 2010