VEGETABLE SEEDS Aubergines Beans - French Beans - Runner Beetroot Broad Beans Broccoli & Rapini Brussels Sprouts Cabbage Cauliflower Carrots Celery Chilli Peppers Courgettes & Summer Squash Cucumbers, Gherkins & suchlike things Fennel Flowers Grains Herbs Kale Kohl Rabi Leaf Greens for Cooking Leeks Lettuces Melons & Watermelons Mustard Greens ( for cooking) Onions - spring sowing Onions - overwintering Onions - special types Oriental Greens for cooking & salads Parsnips Peas Pumpkins & Winter Squash Radishes (salad, & cooking types) Root Parsley NEW Salad Vegetables Sweet Corn Swedes Sweet Peppers Tomatoes : Bush Types Tomatoes : Vines - Cherries Tomatoes : Vines - Larger Tomatoes : Bulgarian Tomatoes : New Centiflor types Tomatilloes & Groundcherries Turnips Unusual Tubers: Oca & Yacon

~ VINE TOMATO SEED part 2: - LARGE FRUITED TYPES ~

These are our large-fruited vine Tomatoes. See the index on the left for other types.

We really like tomatoes - and grow loads of them every year - but only the very best make it into the catalogue!

For an explanation of the differences between bush & vine plant types, click here.

'Doctor Carolyn' VERY BEST FLAVOUR

We’re pleased to offer what may well be the best tasting tomato there is, named after tomato breeder Dr Carolyn Mayle.

This is a medium height vine with spherical, glowing round pink tomatoes about 2” in diameter.

The flavour is fantastic and this is a special strain we have reselected ourselves for bigger, even tastier fruit.

Order ToCa - 18-20 seed [OG2] £2.65

Ben is rather fond of this one, as it is one of the better flavoured of the big-fruited tomatoes - it has a particularly good sweet-acid flavour.

Maincrop red tomato, Medium Vine.

Order ToGL - 30 seed £1.82

'Reisetomate' Pocketbook Vine Tomato
Well, how on earth to describe this? We think you'll just have to look at the photo.

This is a rather unusual tomato from central Europe that grows what can only be described as a cluster of cherry tomatoes all fused together.

They can be twisted off from the fruit bit by bit and eaten, or you can just use it to scare your children . . . .

Order ToRE - 18 to 20 seed[OG2] £2.29

Costoluto Fiorentino
A delicious Italian variety ideal for salads or cooking.

Tall, vigorous plants start to fruit early, and it's a steady producer, cropping over a long period. Gives a heavy yield of huge, juicy, ribbed red fruit over a long season.

Brought to you from the gardeners of Florence in Italy, where they know a thing or two about tomatoes.

Fat, red & gently ribbed fruit, tall vine.

Order ToCF - 30 seed £1.89

'Rose de Berne' Large Pink Salad Tomato
This was sent to us by Frank Kiersblick, as one of his favourite and heaviest-setting traditional tomatoes. He was right! It was one of our best performers in our 2008 trials.

The tall vines make glowing-pink tomatoes. The fruit are quite large, but not quite as big as a ‘beefsteak’ type.

It is a high yielding, juicy, and particularly tasty variety from the continent with very heavy trusses giving crops of several pounds per vine.

Order ToRB - 25 seed £1.98 [CO1]

What is remarkable is that the colours are all swirled together - even inside.  We think this is the prettiest tomato we've ever grown. And it tastes fantastic too. The vines are tall and require strong support to hold all the tomatoes.

Order ToGM - 25 seed £2.20

'Purple Ukraine' Tomato
A good early plum type tomato, this was originally from Irma Hemkel in the Ukraine.

It did really well in our trials, (despite endless grey weather!) , making tall plants that soon set trusses of really large, deep purple plum tomatoes the size and shape of a goose egg.

The tomatoes are both beautiful and delicious in salads, but they are also tasty cooked.

The foliage is very attractive too, with dark green leaves and an interesting 'feathery' appearance.

Purple, great for cooking & salads.

Order ToPU - 25 seed £1.89

'Red Zebra'
This a red version of “Green Zebra” - which is thought by many to be one of the best tasting tomatoes, but we really can’t get on with the idea of a tomato that’s green when ripe. So we found a red strain instead - and that’s much better!

These are nice tall vines, with juicy round red tomates that develop golden zebra stripes as they ripen. The original breeding work was by Tom Wagner of Tater Mater Seeds.

A particularly good flavour as well as being very pretty.

Order ToRZ - 20 seed [OG2] £1.99

Amish Paste

After much tasting throughout the season, we are really impressed by this one - a new addition to our favourites.

The tall vines set pretty early in the season, and make nice red fruit about the size of an apple which weigh up to 1lb each. Not only was it one of the first to flower, but it just kept on making tomatoes for month after month.

The fruits are good. Very dense fleshed, with few seeds - but still a really good tart flavour, so ideal for cooking, ketchups and bottling. And they cook down to an incredibly rich and sweet sauce.

But our most amusing use is as our customary snack of fried tomato on toast - a single slice will do an entire piece of toast:

Large red plums, ideal for sauces , but actually, they're very nice fresh in salads and hamburgers too.

Order ToAP - 20 seed £2.65

Alicante

This is a standard maincrop tomato; so it is not the first to ripen, but it keeps on producing long into the autumn, with really heavy yields from each plant.

Seed carefully grown for us by Tony Haigh in Pembrokeshire, who always grows lots of Alicante each year. Last year, as well as our seed crop, he produced over 200 bottles of ketchup and tomato passata!

Order ToAL - 20 seed £1.59 [OG2]

Saving Tomato Seed:

Here you can seed the seed and juice squeezed into a jar & let ferment for 3 days (no more, no less!)

Good seeds sink and bad ones float.

(And, yes, it is supposed to be mouldy & smelly)

Water is added and poured off several times to clean them, the seed is rinsed in a sieve and put on a plate to dry.

Detailed seed-saving instructions are included with your seeds, so you can do this yourself.

And of course this is only possible because these are all real, non-hybrid varieties.