- You have no items in your shopping cart
- Subtotal: $0.00
[email protected]
Posted on
“What Tomato variety do you recommend?”
This is the most common question that I get asked every time we run a market stall at a farmer’s market or a school fair.
I always answer their question by asking them these questions first, “What are your favourite meals? Have you ever grown any tomatoes in the past. And how much room have you got”
It’s amazing how many different responses you can get.
The fact is that it is quite easy to grow tomatoes successfully, depending on where you grow them and what type you put in.
Here at The Greenhouses, we have narrowed our varieties down to a selection of about 24 types and of those there are 4 main groups:
- Common round fruit
- Small fruiting Cherry type
- Egg shaped varieties
- Heirloom varieties
You can use any of these groups how you want, but traditionally the round fruit is juiced, sliced and eaten fresh or grilled.
The Egg shaped have a thicker skin and less juice making them ideal for cooking sauces and stews.
The smaller cherry come in many colours and are great for salads and are awesome eaten whole.
Heirloom are bred for their amazing flavours. They are often an unusual shape, very soft and juicy making them near impossible to transport. Supermarkets won’t generally stock them as they get damaged too quickly and consumers are turned off by their extraordinary shapes. They are more difficult to grow and take a little longer, but well worth the effort when it comes to the flavours.
A spectrum of colour and shape
Each of these groupings can have different sized fruit and colours.
Most tomato varieties will need to be staked and grow up to 2 metres tall but we do have varieties, such as ‘Tiny Tim’ that are ideal for baskets or a larger fruit called ‘Patio’ that grows to only 60cm making them ideal for a pot on your verandah.
Growing tips:
- Plant healthy seedlings. Make sure the plants are dark green, not wilting, look strong and fresh and have white roots.
- Soil is very important. From here is where the fruit will add to its flavour. For me, a mixture of garden soil, compost and manure is perfect for a garden bed. For planting into a pot or basket, you should use a quality potting mix. The smaller the container, the plants will dry out quicker. Potting mixes are designed to hold more water and release it more uniformly to ensure a greater crop.
- Keep the afternoon sun off the plants. If a plant is stressed by excessive heat or drying out, it will flower less and you’ll get less fruit. Afternoon shading from trees, your house or a shade cloth will make a massive difference.
- Watering – when you first get your seedlings you’ll need to water them once every 2 days until they get established and their root system will spread out and locate more moisture. Every location is different when it comes to watering. You’ll have to keep an eye on your plants and try and water them before they begin to wilt. A routine will develop quickly.
- Mulches and fertilisers. Mulching not only keeps the weeds under control, but also holds the moisture in the ground and reduces the watering needs. Sugarcane mulch is ideal. Cow manure mixed into the soil for me is the best natural way to get nutrients to the plant. Both of these items conveniently come in bags and are easily and neatly applied to wherever you want them.
Top 5 popular varieties:
- Grosse Lisse – Red Round
- Cocktail Cherry – Small fruit (easiest to grow of all tomatoes)
- Roma – Egg shaped
- Black Russian – Medium sized, soft black fruit
- Oxheart – Giant fruit
After our conversation, most customers will generally walk away with a few different varieties. Let’s face it, who doesn’t like a little bit of versatility and eye catching colour in their meals.
