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~ VINE TOMATO Seed ~ These are our VINE Tomatoes. BUSH ones are on another page of their own. 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. ~ VINE TOMATOES part 1: ~ CHERRY AND OTHER SMALL-FRUITED VARIETIES 'Gardener's Delight' - Supersweet Irish Version There are all sorts of small cherry tomatoes being sold under the description of 'Gardeners' Delight'. This version - originally from a small seed collection in USA - has definitely got smaller fruit than what we would normally expect , and we suspect it's not really the original strain at all, being more in the style of the smaller cherry types such as 'sweet 100'. BUT , and it's a big 'but', the flavour is incredible. This is the sweetest cherry tomato we've ever tried. And the fruit, although small, are produced in huge numbers on enormously long trusses. We weren't going to list it , but many visitors to the gardens pointed out that it was the best cherry they'd ever tasted, so we thought we ought to! Get your seed now, you won't be disappointed. Order ToGI - 25 seed [OG1] £1.65   Galina SUPER- EARLY SWEET YELLOW CHERRY From Siberia, this is much like a yellow version of Gardeners' Delight, and we were really impressed by it - very sweet, but balanced by good acidity. The bright yellow 3/4" cherry tomatoes are borne in bunches of seven, and don't fall off when ripe, which makes picking easier. Early to get going (not surprising given where it comes from!) and fruits prolifically over a long period. Tall vines need support. Early yellow cherry. Grow as a vine but let a couple of shoots develop for highest production. Order ToGA - 30 seed [OG1] £1.59   ~ VINE TOMATOES part 2: - LARGE FRUITED TYPES ~ Gigante Liscio (Maincrop Salad type) This Italian tomato from the 1920's comes from a cross of 'Ponderosa' & 'St Louis' in an effort to create the ultimate salad tomato. Constantly popular, since then it has been continually reselected for flavour, strong plants, and large red fruit. It has a particularly good sweet-acid flavour. Maincrop red tomato, Medium Vine. Order ToGL - 30 seed £1.39   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. Fat, red & ribbed, tall vine. Order ToCF Tall Vine. 40 seed £1.49 Note: This really is a very good tomato, with high yields of very big fruit. And others agree. In fact, those of you who read 'Garden Answers' Magazine may have seen a full page advert for a new 'Miracle' tomato last year, at the outrageous price of almost £4 a packet. If you read the small print you'll see that the variety they were offering was actually 'Costoluto Fiorentino' . . .. while we agree the variety is great, perhaps even miraculous, we think our packets are more reasonably priced! 'Cream Sorbet' Dual purpose Salad or Cooking Tomato WEB SPECIAL A very nice new variey from our trials. It grew really well making nice medium tall-vines covered in large numbers of pastel-yellow tomatoes. They are a pale colour very like a good lemon sorbet (the flash has made the photo look a bit deeper yellow than it really is) and have a nice flavour. It is a semi-plum type, so good in salads or cooked. The vines do need support up strings - we didn't pinch all the sideshoots out but let several develop on the same plant. Order ToCS - 30 seed [OG1] £1.50 'Orange Banana' Tomato A fine heirloom tomato - orange and slightly bent! A plum type, so good for making rich orange sauces, but quite sweet and juicy - so also good raw in salads where it adds a great colour. Fun for children who want to grow something a bit unusual, too. Orange, slightly bent plum/paste tomatoes with pointy ends. Tall Vine. Order ToOB - 35 seed[OG1] £1.55 '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 . . . . Easily grown, and productive. It is however a complete pain to deseed, hence the smaller packet and higher price. Sorry! (If you like it, you can always keep your own seed for future years.) Order ToRE - 25 seed[OG1] £1.95 '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 last years' 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! (The higher price simply reflects the fact that it makes very few seeds per tomato - if you like it, why not keep your own seeds for next year?) Order ToRB - 25 seed £1.75 [OG1]   'Gold Medal' Multicolour Beefsteak Tomato Originally from the Ben Quisenberry Collection, this is a large, sweet, juicy golden beefsteak that is mixed colours inside: yellow , pink, and orange! The colours are swirled together - even inside - see the ultra-closeup photo of a slice, on the right: 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 the weight of all the tomatoes. Order ToGM - 25 seed £1.40 'Purple Ukraine' Tomato Our new early tomato for 2008, this was originally from Irma Hemkel in the Ukraine. It did really well in our trials this summer, (despite the 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 ToUP - 25 seed [OG1] £1.49 'Ivory Egg' Vine Salad Tomato This is a very nice one we discovered back in 2000, but has waited until now to be grown enough to be offered to you. Medium-tall vines set trusses of ivory-white fruit, just the size of a large egg. They ripen to a pretty pale yellow colour, and have a good flavour used fresh or cooked. This is the one we used to make the yellow sauce for our multi-coloured pizzas! We really like it, and have have grown a big bed - so there are a couple hundred packets available this year. Order ToIE - 25 seed [OG1] £1.55 'Black Master' WEB SPECIAL A particularly unusual tomato, this is a really huge black beefsteak tomato. The tall vines are very productive, and despite the odd colour, the flavour is very good. It was originally from Rachel Johnson of Gautier, Missisippi, but seems to grow very well for us in the UK. Order ToBM - 20 seed [OG1] £1.80 '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 lighter golden zebra stripes as they ripen. A particularly good flavour. Order ToRZ - 20 seed [OG1] £1.69 De Colgar (Storage Tomato) This is one for all you self-sufficiency types out there. A traditional class of tomato that is pretty much extinct now, these are nice round orange-pink tomatoes bred for winter storage. They ripen a bit later than the others. The idea is that you pick them at the end of them summer and put them carefully aside in your cool larder (much as you would store apples); with a bit of care they keep until January! We have tried this several times and it really does work. (Just as with apples, you need a slightly humid but well-ventilated store, with a steady temperature ideally about 8-10 C. But if you don't get it quite right they still store better than other tomatoes.) They are very similar to the old french variety 'Jaune de Flamee'; we think that there probably were versions of this in every country so that there were tomatoes available for winter salads. But with the advent first of bottling, then freezing, and now supermarket-shipped tomatoes from Spain, these are all extinct. Less juicy than normal tomatoes, with a thick skin, which is why they keep. Vine to 4 feet tall. Sorry - sold out now. Try again in 2009, we hope to grow it again then. Amish Paste (Giant Plum Tomato) This is a new one originally from the Amish community. It is HUGE - one of the largest plum-type tomatoes we have ever seen. 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 - 25 seed £1.49 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.