The Early Tomato Sowing Thread

[mcsee]

It's the middle of our Winter here and I have 22 varieties of tomatoes sown this year, with most germinated over the past couple of days and doing well on the heat pad.

[Two_Sheds]

How do the Aunty Madge rate for flavour TS?

tbh, I can't taste them at all, but Mr TS says they're sweet

[deltz]

Only ripe ones I've got are Red Balconi! The brandywine and purple cherokees are getting big but probably going to take AGES to ripe

[Flummery]

Just had my firs ripe fruit from a Sandul Moldovan from the HSL. Early sowing so heaven knows when it would have ripened if I'd put it in in March! I think it's a fabulous flavour - slightly salty, lemony kick and wonderful tomato after-taste. Mr Flum says it tastes of noththing! We seem to be like Two Sheds and Mr Sheds with the Aunty Madge!

[Sylvan]

I have a ripe tomato!

Well, strictly that should read "had" 'cos it only lasted for seconds after the photo op.

Sungold, sown 3rd Feb. Seen here with some cherries we managed to snaffle from under the birds' noses... er, beaks.

[FROSTYFRECKLE]

Had my first ripe tomato yesterday from an early sowing - a F1 Sungold (nothing to write home about). However I have loads of tomatoes that are almost ripe - PW, Aunt Madge, Monkeys' Ass, Depps, Blueberry and OSU. All I need now is some sunshine.

[binley100]

Gosh FF I've just read this thinking ...what !!! only just got first tom and then I realised you live in the frozen north ..........

[FROSTYFRECKLE]

It's more the wind swept North today Binley. I've had some Red Robin toms but they were on my living room windowsill. So fingers crossed the toms in the greenhouse stop sulking and finally ripen.

[binley100]

Don't want to tempt fate but..........I've still got toms going strong and ripening outdoors with no blight

[FROSTYFRECKLE]

Never say the b word, Binley. Don't tempt fate.

[GarlicLover]

I've only had a few tomatoes from my January sowings so far, but there are loads of big green ones waiting to ripen! I tried Marmande, Outdoor Girl, Roma, Moneymaker, Sweet Million and Gardener's Delight, some in my raised bed and some in containers.

[Two_Sheds]

I chopped most of mine down now ~ they had terrible botrytis. Still, got a really good harvest, about 12 lbs I think

My fault for keeping the gh closed (for warmth, it's been really cool & shady again this "summer"). Mind you, the outdoor basket got it too, no problem with ventilation out there

[Thelma Sanders]

That's sad

I think I've rescued mine by taking of all but a few top leaves

[Sylvan]

Eet ees I, LeClerc

I know it's a bit late (got logged out by a browser update and couldn't find my password) but...

The only plants I actually managed to get ripe tomatoes from were the early ones: San Marzano, Principe Borghese and Moneymaker (yeuch, they were horrible!) sown on 18th Jan; and Sungold, Gardener's Delight and Tumbling Tom, sown on 3rd Feb.
Anything sown at the end of Feb or during March gave me very few tomatoes (in some cases none at all!).

I only really gave them till 12th September, because we had very high winds forecast for the next day (tail end of hurricane katya) - and the ones that didn't get picked then had to give up a couple of weeks later due to blight but my ripe tomatoes comprised 32 Sungold (374g), 9 San Marzano (290g), 42 Tumbling Toms (248g) and 2 (yes, 2 ) Gardener's Delight (10g).

I think I'll be sowing everything in January next year...