Tonnes of Top Tasty Tomatoes

Well, not quite tonnes. But kilos and kilos. I made two mistakes with tomatoes this season - I got them in the ground too late for our slightly shorter mountains summer and I viciously pruned them to allow large fruit to get larger - I did this too late and lost lots of baby tomatoes. But despite all that, we have extra tomatoes for sauces/pickles or soup to eat and store, with a few green ones to ripen or pickle.

Typical morning sweep's harvest:




unripe Rouge De Marmande (above) and Martino's Red Roma (below)


And of course there were some for the slugs to enjoy!


I tried quite a few varieties this year for fun. I also planted some seeds saved from last season. Most worked and one looked like it had crossed and had weird-looking fruit (a failed beefsteak).

All up I planted Black Russian, Cream Sausage, Martino's Red Roma, Roma, Amish Paste, Tommy Toe, Rouge De Marmande and some cherry tomatoes in a pot by the back door. The Tommy Toe fruited prolifically and tasted lovely but I was surprisingly more taken with the (yellow) Cream Sausage that had a firm and quite sweet (less acidic) flesh. I also loved the Rouge De Marmande - a perfect mix of firm, juicy, tasty and sizeable.


Mostly Tommy Toes (small round), Rouge De Marmande (large ones on right)


(Above) Tommy Toe (top), (L-R) Cream Sausage, Martino's Red Roma, Amish Paste
and below a small Rouge De Marmande, Cream Sausage and Black Russian.

And below the lovely and striking difference in texture and colour of these three (shown with chopped up squash)


There are supposedly around 7500 varieties of tomatoes to choose from in the world!! A far cry from the few varieties sold in stores. So far I still prefer the Amish Paste to the Roma for taste and texture, the Rouge De Marmande and Black Russian for good performance in cooler climates, juicy, tasty flesh and long-yields, and Cream Sausage for sweetness and chunky, firm texture. The Tommy Toes are good for ridiculously large numbers of large juicy cherry-like tomatoes with a slightly acidic flavour.

Honestly, you could spend your whole gardening life just trying different tomatoes!

Amusingly, according to Wikipedia, the country known for its famous pasta sauces and love of tomatoes grew only 17% of the number of tomatoes that China grew in 2008.