Tomato Growing 2025

Copper Currant (outdoors) still churning them out. No signs of disease so far.

 

I've grown gardeners delight for years but this will be the last. The quality has totally gone,no flavour, which used to be great. So who's fault is this?
On another note found Sungold to be a cherry tomato with a high yield and decent flavour.

 

As we come to the end of the tomato growing season I am posting my views on the varieties I grew this year from best to worst.
1 Sungold, orange, cherry, early, very sweet, blight resistant, however hard I try I can’t find another variety to beat it. Just a pity they have not made a bigger fruiting variety. Will grow again.
2 Gardeners Delight 2005 strain. Red, big cherry, quite a sharp taste but very good, modern strains are dreadful! Will grow again.
3 Bloody Butcher. Red, very early, small beefsteak. Good tasting but it’s real bonus is how early it is to produce when we are all desperate for our first tomato of the season. Will grow again.
4 Tigerella. Red stripped, medium sized, good tomatoey flavour, will grow again.
5 Fireworks. Red, large. For some unknown reason the couple of plants I was given to try only produced 1 truss and then stopped growing! What they did produce were really meaty tomatoes so will try growing my own next year and hopefully they will not do the same thing.
6. San Marzano.Red bell shaped beef tomato. For cooking, excellent for Ratatouille. Heavy cropping, late but worth growing. Will grow again.
7.Crokini. Red small cherry. Very attractive as shiney red. Still going strong and skins not splitting like Sungold do late in the season. Prolific. Taste, hmm quite good. Grow again maybe.
8. Honey Delight. Yellow medium. Very heavy cropping, quite good taste. Still going strong despite it being colder. Grow again maybe.
9. Sweet Aperitif. Red, cherry. Nothing to write home about, Crokini similar but better. Won’t grow again.
10 Alicante. Red medium. Was given the plant, pretty sure I have grown it before ONCE for a good reason. Pretty tasteless, won’t grow again.
11. Koralik. Red medium/large bush type. Totally tasteless, won’t grow again.
12. Garden Pearl. Pinky/ red. Small determinate. Good for the likes of hanging baskets as really do grow small unlike tumbling toms which can get seriously way too big. Tasteless, won’t grow again.
All the above were grown in a greenhouse. All grown in soil other than the Garden Pearl which were grown in hanging baskets. None were fed other than the Garden Pearl as the soil is very rich having horse manure added annually. I did a test a couple of years ago with tomato feed and none, there was virtually no difference so now don’t bother feeding those grown in the greenhouse borders.

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Thanks! That was really interesting to read. Gardener's Delight was my favourite a few years ago just for how easy and prolific it grew but apparently I've never grown a true Gardener's Delight. I grew Gardener's Ecstasy this year from Real Seeds, which was supposedly a similar but tastier variety but compared to other varieties I grew, I'd say it was relatively bland.

Like other commenters have mentioned, Sungold remains one of my favourite cherry tomatoes for flavour.

 

Like many others, Sungold are always a favourite for me and I've grown them for many years. It's interesting how we perceive "tasty" - I dislike the tendency for breeders now always to concentrate on sweet. My Sungolds are tangy to my taste rather than sweet.

 

Maybe that's not the one I want then. All I've grown this year is four Maskotka plants and the crop has been phenomenal. But their taste is more on the acidic side than the sweet, so next year I want to supplement them with a more sweet variety.

 

We all taste differently but to me Sungold is the sweetest Tomato I grow.

 

I find Sungold a perfect mix of tangy and sweet, but they're always sweeter when picked straight form the plant and eaten, especially if they're warm. Mine are undercover when grown, which makes that easier.
I might experiment next year and keep one outside to see if there's a notable difference in the flavour.
The Toddler one I grew this year did well, but it didn't taste of much to me. It was good for doing bruschetta because you're adding flavour to the toms anyway for that.

 

I grew the Maskotka a couple of years ago @LunarSea - prolific croppers as you say and they tasted good too.
@Fred Clarke - that's a shame about your Sungold splitting. Never had that problem with them altho some of the Black Krim and Bloody Butcher fell foul of it particularly later in the season.

 

I always think growing in proper "dirt" outside gives the best toms.
Greenhouse grown in pots or bags, fed with liquid feed, are basically supermarket toms.
I think growing conditions must have the biggest difference on taste, probably more than the variety, but rarely gets mentioned.

 

My OH's father was a grower in the Lea Valley - their cukes and tomatoes were always grown in proper "dirt" albeit under glass. The produce was picked, taken overnight to Covent Garden Market and on a customer's table soon after. Once the season was over, Chrysanths were the next crop over the winter for the cut flower market. All changed now and not for the better !! .
Have to say that I do use "dirt" to grow mine in in the GH and rarely disappointed flavour wise with my variety choice.

 

Oh I wondered about that. We used to see massive greenhouses full of Chrysanths near Jodrell Bank on the Cheshire Plain during the cooler months. Now I know why