Tomato Advice and thoughts (i know this has been asked before!!)

[Jungle Jane]

This year i decided to grow them in pots in the ground to try and control the growing and amount of tomatoes so that they would ripen before blight.

How big are the pots & is it an arrangement where you've cut the base off the pot? Or are the roots in a contained space? How have you controlled the amount of tomatoes,have you cut the growing tip off of the plant at two or three trusses? Is so then yours & your mums plants have been treated a lot differently.
Edit to add golden sunrise is the sweetest variety I've grown.

[Penellype]

I can vouch for the huge difference in taste depending on where you grow tomatoes and what you do with them. This is an extract from my notes on Sungold from 2012:

"Fruit from the first plant planted outside began to be ready in early August, and this was yellow and larger, like last year. The one from the mini greenhouse was also producing larger fruit, which is not yet turning yellow as of 4/8. Other plants that were planted outside before the fruit formed indoors are producing cherry sized tomatoes, as is the one that was left in its pot in the cold frame. This is puzzling as these plants are producing totally different fruit (size, taste and colour) and yet are clones of each other. The small orange tomatoes had fabulous flavour and although skins were tough they were easy to peel without using hot water. The bigger yellow ones were much more watery in flavour, although still nice."

Similarly I find Shirley tend to taste much nicer when grown in the greenhouse than when grown on the windowsill in the house, presumably due to getting more nutrients from a larger volume of compost.

[Thelma Sanders]

Some different views on perfecting tomato taste, from James Wong as usual
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...-your-tomatoes

The salt treatment could be worth a try with a few?

[emarisa28]

The James Wong article is fab, its kinda similar to what ive been doing. I placed some flower buckets with holes in the bottom into the soil - to try and control the root system. I did stop growth at 4 trusses but i think next year i will try 3. The salt treatment is sort of similar to what ive started doing the past couple of weeks which is not water too much as it is mimicking a drought. I did hear somewhere (it could have been Dobies online videos) that if the plant is starved of water it will concentrate on ripening. This could be the way to go as i only watered (with feed) once last week and the Ox tomato i picked yesterday was the best so far!! Yey!

ps - ive also tried his asprin spray for blight and it seemed to help, with early blight anyway xxxx

[Snoop Puss]

With the Cuor di Bue (Oxheart) toms, I find it pays to leave them till they go a really deep red. They will continue to ripen and stay in good condition on the plant for a long time. When they're like, you can peel them easily with a small sharp knife. They make a fantastic chopped tom salad like that.

I'm growing Pantano Romanesco for the first time this year. Scarlet mentions them I think. We like them a lot and I'll grow them again.

This year, I have a double row of toms and the ones at the back are in pretty well constant shade. They taste just as good as the ones exposed to the sun. At first I tried to avoid having tom plants in the shade, but saw one of the old boys growing them like this and his were very productive and nice flavoured. So I don't worry about it as much.

[MarkPelican]

I find that all beefsteak tomatoes are best left on the plant until they are soft to the touch. However, cherry and standard sized tomatoes go overripe before then and end up tasting mealy. Its interesting to see the comment about golden sunrise, I tried them one year and they were awful.

Every year is different, every plant unique.