We don’t really eat fresh tomatoes in this house, and as a rule I don’t tend to grow them. Last year I was tempted by a trio of unusual flavoured tomatoes from Wyevale, but they were tall and needy things that wanted constant watering. I didn’t notice any significant difference between the flavours of the ones we did eat; I gave most of the fruit away. When I had a juicer I would grow cherry tomatoes and make tomato juice; the chickens loved the leftover pulp. (And yes, if you juice yellow tomatoes you get yellow tomato juice.)
I prefer determinate varieties, for which you don’t have to faff about with the endless side-shoot removal. I once grew a pair of indeterminate tomatoes for a Garden Organic trial. They rapidly took over the greenhouse, it was a jungle. I will stick to well-behaved, bite-sized tomatoes when I grow them in future.
However, I am clearly in the minority in my tomato views, because people all over the world grow them, and eat them by the kilo. Here in the UK there are plenty of gardeners who grow no fruits or vegetables other than tomatoes, often in grow bags on the patio. They’re a symbol of summer. That, and my general interest in edible plants, means I was intrigued by the newsletter I got from Seeds of Italy this morning, explaining the regional tomato varieties grown in Italy:
And that’s just a small fraction of the tomato varieties Seeds of Italy have on offer, and they’re just one supplier (with whom I have no commercial relationship, in case you’re wondering!). The same newsletter does point out that they’re quite high up on Ethical Consumer’s score card for seed companies.
A quick Google suggests that tomatoes in Italy are vulnerable to late blight disease, as they are in the UK. They’re not
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