What Are People Buying? Latest Top 15 Tomatoes Sold

• Piccolo
• Sungold
• Hundreds and Thousands
• Sunsugar
• Scotland Yellow
• Gardeners Delight
• Ananas Noir
• Peron
• Black/Brown Cherry
• Rosella (NEW)
• Red Alert
• Ethel Watkins Best
• Indigo Rose
• Mariannas Piece
• Brandywine Pink

Sowing Next Years Crop

Last Year I tried to see if pre-chitting my Tomato seeds would work better especially as some of my seed was getting old, My Dad had successfully used this method for all his Tomato seeds chitting them on damp kitchen roll indoors before potting them into small pots.


So I decided to give it a go. But I got a bit ambitious as I needed to chit a good few of a lot of varieties I tried laying them out in rows on the paper several varieties on one sheet Bad Idea !! one slight knock and they were all mixed up Not good so whilst they did chit well it was a bit of a disaster and I ended up with a load of mixed Tomato plants and it was abandoned after one batch. After that they were sown straight into plugs initially then later i sowed into Jiffy plugs But this proved quite wasteful as I ended up with a number of blank cells/Blank Jiffy plugs.


I think I do need to pre-chit so I have been looking at alternative ways and I think I have hit the answer I have discovered you can get Petri dishes really cheaply online and I think these would be a good option as you can get them divided into 2 or 3 sections Not fully decided if I am going to grow them on kitchen roll, blotting paper or even agar yet But as they have lids they can be stacked in propagators to chit then once each one has a good root transferred with a seed spoon to a Jiffy 33mm Plug to grow on for dispatch that way I should reduce wastage.

Tomato Growing Tips

Growing Tomatoes has to be one of the best things to do in the garden there is no comparison between the bland tasteless Tomato that you have just paid a fortune for in the Supermarket that has travelled half way across the world to get here ( although they are getting better at offering interesting well flavoured home grown ones BUT at a price ) and the one you have just picked and eaten straight from the vine so how easy is it to grow tomatoes ?? A lot easier than you think !

What do I grow them in and Where?


If you have a greenhouse super your off to a great start get rid of all that junk you store in there It is for growing Tomatoes in not a second garage !

If you haven't got a greenhouse no matter you can still get a fantastic crop of Tomatoes outside the best place obviously is against a South facing wall But anywhere that gets a good amount of sun and not too much wind will be fine.


Now what to grow them in or rather what not to grow them in personally I wouldn't bother with growbags for Tomatoes if you must use growbags then firstly don't buy cheap ones go for either the Arthur Bowers or Westland ones which were both highly rated in Which Trials and what i would do for extra depth is buy these re-usable grow bags you can get now for a couple of quid and tip the compost out of grow bags into those to give you a good depth.

 Re-Usable Grow Bag


If you have a greenhouse border you can plant in then work in lots of well rotted manure or compost (same goes if your planting in soil or a raised bed outside) when it comes to planting I would sprinkle either a small handful of general high potash fertiliser or fishmeal, seaweed meal, or Miracle Grow Organic Veg fertiliser in the hole plant the Tomato plants as deep as possible I usually strip off the two seedling leaves and plant at least as deep as the first set of true leaves if the Tomatoes are tall strip off the lower leaves and go even deeper. Tomato plants will sprout roots from the stem so the deeper you can get them the better root system they will have and the better plant and therefore yield you will have. Then firm the soil round the stem and water well preferably with Maxicrop plant growth stimulant.

If you don't have a greenhouse bed or bed outside then you will need to grow in a large pot I use old Flower buckets with holes drilled in the bottom you can quite often get from Morrisons Supermarket when they sell them off or any planter around 10-15 litres.

This is the sort of pot size I grow in 






But by far my preferred way of growing Tomatoes is in the
They are expensive But they will repay you every penny and then some what they claim on their website is true I know because I tested them out. From what I can tell the UK agent for them is no more But it looks like The Organic Gardening Catalogue does them as well as a hydroponics firm and you can get them from America via e-bay and Amazon.

A few years back we were asked to supply plants for the guy that ran Earthbox UK and as part of that we were asked to plant up loads of them for a show we planted 14 of them with various veg and you would not believe the size and speed they all grew and the crops they all produced. And I have grown my Tomatoes in them ever since 

Here is my Earthboxes laden with Tomatoes last year despite the wet summer. And the only time i have ever had blight on Tomatoes
in Earthboxes was not until October of this year the first time in 4 years!! I think it is because the plants grow so robust.


                                                        I promise you have not tasted Tomatoes until you pick one and eat it straight from the plant warmed by the Sun mmmmmmmm delicious.

Varieties easy to grow Sungold, Gardeners Delight, Alicante, Ailsa Craig, Moneymaker, Rosada, Supersweet 100.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
Or if you wish to be slightly more adventurous try these for outstanding flavour
Bottondoro, Super Sioux, Aunt Rubys German Green, Paul Robeson, Piccolo, Sungrape, Sunsugar, Golden Cherry, Annanas Noir, Black Krim, Mariannas Piece,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

New Varieties for 2014

Below is the first list of new varieties for 2014 these will all be on the website in the next few days some are already these are all from seed saved by my dad this Autumn as you can see he grows a few Tomatoes :)

They will all be in this Category on the website and Facebook

http://www.tomato-plants-direct.co.uk/ourshop/cat_710453-5-New-For-2014.html

Alice                                               Heart Shaped Red
Alice Roosevelt                              Regular Round Red
Aussie                                             Red Beefsteak
Bi-Colour Cherry                           Red/Yellow Bi-Colour Cherry
Cheesmans                                     Red Cherry Plum
Cluj Yellow                                   Yellow Cherry
College Challenger                        Redish/Pink Regular Round
Costa Rica                                      Round Red
Coyote                                           White/Yellow Cherry
Cuban                                            Yellow Grape Yellow Small Plum
Earle Of Edgecombe                     Orange Beefsteak
Egyptian                                        Red Plum
Ganti                                              Red Beefsteak
Glory Of Maldova                         Round Red
Guernsey Island                             Red/Green Striped Regular Round
Heidi                                              Red Plum
Kesckemeti Jubileum                    Round Red
Kosovo                                          Heart Shaped Red
Maja Mini                                     Patio/Windowsill Red Cherry
Manitoba                                       Round Red
Master Caruso                               Round Red
Msia Large                                    Red Cherry
Omars Lebonese                           Red Beefsteak
Peron                                             Round Red
PinkstineYellow                           Yellow Plum
Pusa Ruby                                    Round Red
Santa Cruz Kada                          Round Red
Saras Wild Galapagos                  Red Cherry
Sierra Leone                                 Red Beefsteak
Tartare Of Mongolistan                Round Red
Tegucigulpa                                  Red Plum
Varigated Round                           Red Variegated Foliage !
Yellow Bosnian                            Yellow Beefsteak
Zogola                                          Red Beefsteak ,P>

Best Sellers For 2014 So Far

Top selling Tomatoes for 2014 so far

Piccolo
Scotland Yellow
Gardeners Delight
Hundreds And Thousands
Rosada F1
SunSugar F1
Home Sweet F1
Sungold F1
Brandywine Red
Ethel Watkins Best
Indigo Rose
Marianna's Piece
Sweet Aperatif
Tumbler

Best Selling Tomatoes 2013

Here is the final Top 10 Best Sellers on the Tomato Website for 2013

1: Sungold
2: Hundreds And Thousands
3: Gardeners Delight
4: Piccolo
5: Sunsugar
6: Super Sioux
7: Ailsa Craig
8: Tumbling Tom Red
9: Ananas Noir
10: Ferline

Hundreds and Thousands would have been definitely No 1 if I had it listed from day 1 as I only listed it in May and it sold in stupid numbers very very quickly