tomato growing trial

Tidy Treats, from Egmont Seeds

​As discussed in a previous blog post, this summer I am doing a tomato growing trial in search of the best varieties to grow in our garden in future seasons.  Now that it’s past mid-summer, I thought it would be a good time to report back on the progress of our tomatoes and highlight some of those which have stood out for us.  To be honest, it’s quite simple.  The star performers are our container and hanging basket grown tomatoes.  The ones in the ground haven’t fared that well, with one or two exceptions which I will outline below.  In the future, I may well only grow tomatoes in containers and hanging baskets to save precious ground space for cucumbers and zucchini, which need room to sprawl, especially now that I’m back to growing garlic for mum, which is only harvested on the longest day, making ground space less available come Labour Weekend when tomatoes are traditionally planted in the garden.

Here are some notes about some of the different tomato varieties we planted in our garden this summer.

Hanging basket/container varieties

1. Topsy Tom (Egmont Seeds) – I grew this variety for the first time this season.  There are 12 seeds in a packet, for $4.  Every single seed germinated which amazed me and I planted the twelve seedlings into twelve plastic hanging baskets which are suspended from our washing line, approximately two weeks after Labour Weekend.  These tomatoes were the first to fruit, beating our Tumbling Tom tomatoes (also from Egmont), a firm favourite in the summer garden.  Around Christmas time, the plants weren’t looking too good to be honest.  They started going yellow and I wondered about their health, but they continue to amaze me.  We have been harvesting large red cherry tomatoes from the plants every day and the plants continue to put out more branches containing tomatoes which ripen quickly.  Even if these were the only tomatoes in our garden, there would still be more than enough to meet our needs, which is excellent value for just $4 for the packet of seeds.   I would highly recommend these in all gardens, especially where space is an issue because they can be grown in a compact manner in a hanging planter, as we have done.  I hope that Egmont Seeds will continue to stock these in future.
2. Tumbling Tom Red and Yellow (Egmont Seeds) – I sowed two packets of each of these and they germinated really well, with red doing better than yellow as it seems more robust for some reason.  I planted the seedlings into coconut fibre hanging baskets which are on our concrete slab outside our front lounge ranch slider (they are on the ground, not suspended unlike Topsy Tom).  The two varieties grew prolifically since they were planted around mid-November (the yellow ones were planted in December as they took longer to grow) and they have recently started to become ready.  I gave one to my uncle as a present for his birthday in early December.  They are a decent size cherry tomato full of flavour. Tumbling Tom continues to impress and remains a staple in our summer garden.  I would highly recommend this variety to other gardeners, especially those that are space poor such as us.
3. Tidy treats (Egmont Seeds) – I grew this variety for the first time this season.  The seeds all germinated really well, but I would expect nothing less from Egmont Seeds.  I planted the seedlings in 9 litre square black plastic pots from the Warehouse.  The plants are very compact and tomatoes started becoming ready in mid to late December.  The tomatoes are smaller than Topsy Tom and Tumbling Tom, but have a lot of flavour.  I would recommend this variety to other gardeners who are short on space and who like growing plants in containers.
4. Balcony and Patio (Egmont Seeds) – I grew these varieties for the first time this summer.   I planted these in troughs along with my green beans (which are growing up trellises attached to the fence).  They have been cropping superbly and the cherry tomatoes are a good size, but I made a mistake to plant them with the beans because the latter has suffered as a result.  In the future, it would be better to keep the troughs for the beans and grow Balcony and Patio in separate containers, as I have done for Tidy Treats, Birdie Canary and Patio Choice Yellow
5. Birdie Canary (Egmont Seeds) – I grew Birdie Canary for the first time this summer.  I was impressed by the juicy yellow fruit which came off compact, healthy plants.  This one is a keeper in the garden.
6. Patio Choice Yellow (Kings Seeds) – This is the second time I have grown this variety.  I sowed it last year but didn’t end up with any seedlings for planting out, for some reason, despite having purchased a large packet of seeds. I planted this variety in black plastic 9 litre containers from the Warehouse and the plants have done very well.  They are compact and are laden with juicy yellow cherry tomatoes.  As we really like yellow tomatoes, there is room for Tumbling Tom Yellow, Birdie Canary and Patio Choice Yellow in our garden

Ground varieties

1. Grape Sweet Hearts (Egmont Seeds) – I grew this variety for the first time as I love cocktail tomatoes.  I had never grown grape tomatoes before but they really appealed – during winter we had been buying them from the supermarket for an extortionate price.  Grape Sweet Hearts is a lovely grape tomato which has cropped prolifically.  Although I’m not sure I will grow tomatoes in the ground in future to save space for other crops, if I do I will restrict myself to just one or two varieties and Grape Sweet Hearts is sure to be amongst them.
2. Red Russian (sold by Egmont Seeds) – These were one of the few varieties planted as seedlings purchased from the garden centre, as opposed to being raised from seed by myself.  These plants continue to impress me, continuing to produce bright red round medium sized tomatoes.  They were excellent value at 99 c for six seedlings (I think the two punnets I purchased contained more than this in fact).
3. Better Boy (Egmont Seeds) – I have grown this variety in the past with good results.  I have harvested tomatoes off one of our Better Boy plants and was impressed with the size, flavour and texture of the fruit.
4. Steakhouse (Egmont Seeds) – I was excited to try growing this variety for the first time, which is new to Egmont Seed’s catalogue.  Out of the ten seeds in the packet, six germinated and grew for me so in November, our wwoofers planted all six plants, double staked with wooden stakes like all my fruit trees in anticipation of large, juicy fat tomatoes for making stuffed tomatoes.  However, none of the plants are faring that well.  I don’t think this is a reflection on the variety or Egmont Seeds.  They are planted very close to our pumpkins and have gotten swamped by them.  In saying that, our hanging basket and container grown tomatoes have outperformed all of our tomatoes in the ground, with the exception of Grape Sweet Hearts and Red Russian, which have also done really well.
5. Rapunzel (Egmont Seeds) – Two years ago, I grew Rapunzel and it performed brilliantly.  Last year, it didn’t do very well, so I decided to grow it again.  It didn’t germinate as well as my other tomatoes and out of two packets of seeds, I was left with just a couple of plants.  It’s hard to say that the quality is inferior to other tomatoes though, because I was so busy during spring and it’s possible that they were over or under watered and/or neglected.  I will report back on how our few plants progress this season, as they develop.  I do have a spare packet of seeds in my collection so it is high on the agenda for next year (if I had to grow just two varieties in the ground they would be Rapunzel and Grape Sweet Hearts from Egmont Seeds, which says a lot about my passion for cocktail sized tomatoes!)

​I will update this post with more news from my tomato trial as our plants continue to grow and develop.