Tomato reviews likes & dislikes 2015 - 2020

[Bal]

Excellent thread
I am growing marmande, Tamia indigo and on ther one that I can't quit remember (Ocado) I think. Only had ripe fruit of the marmande so far. Will post when can do a taste test

[Penellype]

I like the sound of the Red Zebra Sparrow, will add to my list to try next year

[Thelma Sanders]

Crimson Crush.
Growth - weird the plant isn't sure if it's a bush or a cordon - in the ground on plot
Taste - very good.
No blight yet, so can't comment on its resistance
Will I grow next year - yes if the armpits overwinter.

Kibits
Growth - Short, lots of branches, grown in the ground under big cloche- small pointy plum
Taste - good cooked
Will I grow next year - yes, always do, a very good cropper for its size.

Stonor's Most Prolific
Growth - Cordon, with short stem between trusses.
Taste - good
Will I grow next year - maybe

Sugar Plum
Growth - tall with very long branches & needs a lot of space in the greenhouse, large trusses of cherry plums.
Taste - quite acid which I like
Will I grow it next year - no.

Rosada
Growth - Exactly the same as Sugar Plum. Fruit the same but a little bigger
Taste - Sweeter than Sugar Plum
Will I grow next year - no.

Black Sea Man
Growth - Waist high bush, large black tinged beefsteak, only 1 or 2 per truss
Taste - Fantastic for bruschetta
Will I grow next year - always do

Nectar Rose
Growth - tall plant, pink, large fruit 3 or 4 per truss
Taste - good if picked just before it looks ripe.
Will I grow them again - yes

Carlton
Growth - Tall plant, I grow Carlton and Nectar Rose at the back of the greenhouse, so they have room.
Large red beefsteak, 2 - 4 per truss, depending on size.
Taste - Fair, I like them stuffed.
Will I grow them again - Yes

Rio Grande
Growth - Semi determinate about 3 ft tall, I restrict them to 2 stems for best yield, some stems give
2 or 3 trusses, some only 1
Taste - good fleshy paste tomato makes good passata.
Will I grow next year - I've grown them for 8 years now

On the bench in pots
Ildi
Growth - thinks it cordon, so had a lot of pruning. Small yellow plums
Taste - sweet
Will I grow next year - maybe.

Yellow Peardrops
Growth - bushy, drooping plant.
Taste - Nice in a mixed salad.
Will I grow next year - maybe.

Gartenperle/Garden Pearl.
Growth - small bushy. I always sow this early and grow on windowledge, then outside for the day -
back in at night, to get my earliest tomatoes in June.
Taste - Not the best, but better than shop-bought and worth it for it's earliness IMO
Will I grow next year - yes until someone comes up with a better tasting early bush tom Ha Ha!

[Penellype]

Gartenperle/Garden Pearl.
Growth - small bushy. I always sow this early and grow on windowledge, then outside for the day -
back in at night, to get my earliest tomatoes in June.
Taste - Not the best, but better than shop-bought and worth it for it's earliness IMO
Will I grow next year - yes until someone comes up with a better tasting early bush tom Ha Ha!

Worth trying Balconi Red, which is slightly sweeter and in my opinion better than Garden Pearl (others may disagree). Very small upright plants (about 15 inches + pot at maturity when grown in 3 litre pots) can live on windowsills until after they start fruiting. Large cherry tomatoes were ready mid June on an east facing windowsill having been sown in February.

[jacob]

Not enough ripening to give a full account, but the following look fine (in the greenhouse, outdoors is a wipe out this year): sungold, gardener's delight, moneymaker, tamina, galina, ailsa craig, cossack, red alert and something described as "traditional favourite".

Now the moans:

* Balconi (yellow). Midget plants (not just compact, but tiny), very poor yield.

* Lateh. Supposed to be an early crop variety, but more like a no crop variety. Grown alongside red alert, which did their job again. Sorry realseeds, this was a dud.

[maverick451]

* Lateh. Supposed to be an early crop variety, but more like a no crop variety. Grown alongside red alert, which did their job again. Sorry realseeds, this was a dud.

What happened to your Latah Jacob?

[PyreneesPlot]

Excellent thread - could it be a Sticky so we can all find it when seed buying season comes round?

San Marzano
Health and vigour 7/10
Taste 8/10
Grow Again? Probably
Roma
Health and vigour 8/10
Taste 7/10
Grow Again? Probably
I swap back and forth between Roma and SM as the toms are marginally nicer on the SM but the yield is better on the Roma. Both are used for bottling and sauce making.
Gardener’s Delight
Always reliable, pretty early into crop and I like the balance of flavour, sweet with a tart kick.
Health and vigour 9/10
Taste /10
Grow Again? Yes
Green Zebra
Horrible pappy flavourless flesh and even when picked green and hard last year for pickling, still disintegrated. Free seeds which is why I tried again this year!
Health and vigour 6/10
Taste 2/10
Grow Again? No
Marmande
Healthy and vigour 5/10
Taste 8/10
Grow Again? Yes
Almost always the first plant to get blight but unrivalled for taste as a slicing tomato. Excess gets bottled along with the two plum types.
Ola Polka
Small yellow fruit on weak plants that have already died for no obvious reason. Did initially grow fast and early to fruit, but the tomatoes are thin yet hard skinned and the flesh very pappy.
Health and vigour 3/10
Taste 2/10
Grow Again? No
Prince Borghese
I grow this exclusively for sun-drying, although if I have lots of fruit and no sun it goes in the bottling factory! Delicious dried, we often just chew them from the jar throughout the winter, and it looks lovely with a deep pinky red colour and slight heart shape.
Health and vigour 8/10
Taste10/10
Grow Again? Yes
Black Cherry
Second year on this one; late into fruit and the fruits themselves have been very watery, odd considering we’ve had a drought and the plum types all had BER at the start of the cropping season. Also rotting on the vine. Last year they were abundant and great – just add vodka and you have a Bloody Mary they were so sweet and spicy.
Health and vigour 6/10
Taste 6/10
Grow Again? Undecided
St Pierre
My stuffing tomato – plants do go down with blight soon after the Marmande but until then they are excellent, very fleshy so there is little room for stuffing much in, sweet but not overly so and the skin is strong enough to hold the whole thing together during cooking. Love it!
Health and vigour 6/10
Taste 9/10
Grow Again? Yes
Sungold
What’s not to like? First to crop. Beautiful sweet and robust fruit, perfect in a packed lunch on a long walk.
Health and vigour 9/10
Taste 10/10
Grow Again? Yes, despite the cost!

(All my tomatoes are gown outdoors and the summer temperature here is normally mid 20s at the coolest and often in the high 30s with low 40s achieved this year, plus we have a long season (blight willing) with my plants in the ground at the end of April this year.)

[jacob]

Latah was treated fairly well, in pots in the greenhouse, looked good and green and healthy, flowered abundantly... and set very little fruit. Looked really poor next to the red alerts. At least it lived up to its billing of being very early (relative to everything in this slow tomato year).

[maverick451]

Latah was treated fairly well, in pots in the greenhouse, looked good and green and healthy, flowered abundantly... and set very little fruit. Looked really poor next to the red alerts. At least it lived up to its billing of being very early (relative to everything in this slow tomato year).

Thanks

I am growing Latah, what surprised me was the lack of cold tolerance for a supposedly early tomato, they suffered really badly and went a yellow colour, I actually sowed some more on 1st June and they have overtaken the ones sown in march and already setting fruit.

For me Its been a fast maturing one but not an early season one in this country.

I agree about not much fruit, ill see how these new ones go though, the tomatoes I have had though tasted really really nice, probably my 2nd favourite after sungold.

[1Bee]

Thanks so much for this, really useful! And I don't even grow tomatoes... (yet...)

[Scarlet]

I am going to post in here soon with my list, I just haven't had much time this week! Though my Latah plants have been great, it wasn't as early as the maskotka plants but I really like the taste. Not huge crops but it will be on my grow again list.

[Bill HH]

Just a little note about Sungold. They are a very very bad tomato. When i enter the greenhouse I hear these little voices "Eat me, eat me" So unfortunately I do. My wife says "any Sungold yet?" I look sad and say "No it's the cold weather you know"

[goosander]

Next year I am just going to stick with Sungold/Ailsa Craig and Shirley. They give me enough toms and all taste very good. Mind I said that last year.
Bob

[Penellype]

Sweet Aperitif
I was so disappointed with the first tomato I ate that I waited to try a 2nd before reviewing it.
Health and vigour 3/10 Tall, straggly plants with sickly looking leaves that readily die off at the ends and are strangely curled upwards. Whole plant looks pathetically ill. Plant grown in greenhouse had 3 full trusses of flowers, every one of which fell off despite careful hand pollination and plenty of insects. Lots of fruit on outdoor plants, if you like tomatoes the size of large peas.
Taste 4/10, very average. Maybe they just are not ripe enough.
Will I grow next year - No, I like larger tomatoes

Size comparison:



Top left the largest Sweet Aperitif, top right an average Sungold
Bottom average sized Balconi red and yellow.
Teaspoon for size comparison.

[meteor]

What a brilliant thread and very informative too, I'll add my results later as I still have varieties that haven't matured yet. I am feasting on federle, rosada , tumbler so far, the gardeners delight just about to kick in this week and another 4 or 5 types should be ready by the weekend