Trying different tomato varieties

This year I experimented trying different tomato varieties from my usual tried and true varieties. Kings Plant Barn had some Epic Collection tomato varieties that I hadn’t seen before so decided to try them out as they seemed to be a good mix of sizes and colours:

• Molly Jane
• Oxheart (new generation)
• Tomato Savour
• Sugar-gold

I got them quite early season and was very pleased to be able to say “I have a greenhouse” when told that it was still to early to plant them outside. I didn’t bother to repot them from the pots they came in but just put them straight into the 4 pot Autopot System tray in the greenhouse. They grew extremely well but unfortunately it took a bit longer than expected to get my new vegetable garden installed so by the time I went to plant them out, they were very tall and a bit unwieldy to manage, and one got broken off before I got the stakes all in place.

Usually I have been able to pick my tomatoes as soon as they started to colour up and bring them inside to ripen up to stop the birds getting them. But last year the birds started pecking them before they were even ripe so I wanted to be able to net them. I had bought a new Popadome net that was 2m x 2m – the perfect size for my new garden bed and with a zipper to make it easy to get in so I really wanted to put them in that bed rather than somewhere else.

It was a very strange summer: very hot and humid in December, then torrential rain interspersed with very hot and humid in January and February. Lots of people were saying that their tomatoes had formed good fruit but were just not ripening. I started to get a small trickle of ripening tomatoes from mid December that was perfect for my general eating needs so was very happy with that. Then a good harvest of tomatoes for cooking and freezing, followed by an endless tsunami of cherry tomatoes!

Molly Jane Tomato

An extremely large fruiting variety with a strange yellow-orange-red mottled colour pattern. The colour really confused me because I couldn’t work out when it was ripe. My initial reaction was always that it wasn’t quite ripe yet so I’d leave them a bit longer and I lost quite a few that became over-ripe and started to rot. However it fruited copiously and the fruit were very large – my biggest one weighed over half a kilo!! That size was a bit ridiculous, even half a tomato would almost be a meal by itself. But it had good meaty flesh that was good for cooking – I used mine to make tomato relish.

Oxheart New Generation Tomato

I think this was my favourite tomato of the four – the most consistent, reliable and versatile. It started to ripen first and gave me a few at a time over a long period. It was a good size with a good red colour and nice tasty meaty flesh. This was my go-to tomato for grilling and salads.

Savour Tomato

Savour was the plant that got broken off at planting but it sprouted again fairly quickly and fruited well. I was disappointed that its size was a lot smaller than it appeared on the label – it ended up being another cherry tomato rather than the small-mid size one I had hoped for. But it was a lovely flavour and good as a cherry tomato – a reddish orange in colour. It was also a well-behaved plant that didn’t try to dominate the garden, unlike Sugargold below!

Sugargold Tomato

I think Sugargold produced more weight of tomatoes overall than Molly Jane, but it was absolutely rampant. I am not good with pinching laterals at the best of times but there was no way I could keep up with this one and eventually gave up, letting it grow up and be supported by the netting. It sprawled all over the other varieties and just kept on fruiting and fruiting and fruiting. It is an oval to plum shaped, golden yellow fruit with lovely sweet flavour. I gave away bags and bags of these tomatoes and got lots of positive feedback from all the recipients.