Tomato VSP

I received a selection of tomato seeds from the Grow Your Own forum VSP Virtual Seed Parcel which is like an actual seed parcel but as the name implies is not real in that it does not travel from person to person. There are some extremely old heritage varieties of Tomatoes within the Tomato VSP and these are the ones that I have just sown to replenish the stocks as the seeds are getting a little old


Alaskan Fancy

 

Indeterminate variety which is excellent for those short-season summers, these are the earliest plum tomatoes available in today's market! Pear-shaped, bright red plums produce abundant yields to satisfy your salad and canning needs for the season. Its earliness does not detract one bit from its juicy flavor! Fruits are 2" x 1-1/2" and weigh about 2 oz. each.



Black + Brown Boar

 This smallish tomato has a very unique coloration. Perfectly striped with green and browns, Black and Brown Boar tomato will light up your salsa and sauces. Its flavour is very up-front, yet not to overwhelming. Sweetness, earthiness, richness and flavourful are all characteristics of this little gem. 75 Days.



Cyrils Choice

 An English family heirloom, kept alive by D. Rankilor whose brother, Cyril, grew it on his allotment before he died. Given to The Seed Ambassadors Project in 2007 by the Heritage Seed Library in England.


An early dwarf tomato that is also very productive for such small vines. Plants produce several flushes of dark red fruit, yielding later into the season than other determinate types. Fruit are little two to three bite saladettes with good sweet flavour. At 2′ tall they are good for container gardening, a little taller than Gundula. Our friend Tera, formerly of Morning Sun Nursery, used them for container sales and said they were the cutest tomato plants she had ever seen. Rugose, regular-leafed foliage give Cyril’s Choice a special style.



Egyptian

Called 'Egyptian' as it is purportedly descended from seeds found in an Egyptian tomb. As the more accepted origination of tomatoes is from South America, perhaps it is more likely the original seed was found in an Inca pyramid, and along the way the story has got a little confused! All a bit of fun really!

A reliable variety for protected growing, this produces heavy trusses of plum-shaped fruits that are deep red in colour. The flesh is extremely dense and meaty and has a lovely rich flavour. Back to 'that story', if the Egyptians had made pizza they would have used this for making the base sauce!

·         This is an indeterminate variety and best grown as a cordon (vine).

·         For best yields stop at 5th truss.

·         Suitable for protected growing only.

First In The Field

Tomato First in the Field is very good for outdoor allotment or garden growing. It is vigorous for its type and produces medium red sized fruits. Has a good following amongst amateur allotment growers.

A tall 1m high bush type variety



Kenilworth / King George

George Garratt sourced this variety from the last commercial grower who used to supply local shops in Kenilworth. A classic round 30-40mm across red tomato with a sumptuous, swee5t and herby flavour Grow as cordon



Latah Red

Pronounced “Lay-tah”, Although developed by the University of Idaho (and named after the Idaho county) it seems to have gained more of a following in the UK.


Real tomato flavour, described as bright and juicy. Low bushy determinate plants bear 2-3oz salad size fruits prolifically. Some tendency for green shoulders but acceptable in a 5 week tomato. Determinate. 50-60 days and perfectly suited for containers.



Lukullus

German commercial heirloom variety said to be developed from a cross of Danish Export and Jewel that dates back to 1906, it was once one of the most popular tomatoes in Germany. Indeterminate, regular leaf plant produces fruit 40 grams on average, small, red, round, up to 15 fruits per truss. Good fruity flavour with a little acidity, Early and productive. Seeds via Nellie-m Grapevine VSP who obtained from G.Bohl’s PSA (Private Seed Archive)



Petit Moineau

“Petit Moineau” (Little Sparrow) is a deep red currant tomato with an enormous punch in flavour. It has the strongest flavour of any currant or currant-type tomato and this is not in an unpleasant way. It is strongly acid and strongly sweet. These would just explode in a salad.

Petit Moineau is a Canadian heirloom from the Chateauguay region of Quebec. Written descriptions all state that this makes a very large and sprawling plant, which is typical of most currant varieties.


The plant can be kept in bounds somewhat by reducing the growing medium. I grew this variety in a 5 gallon pot, and although the branches were still strongly horizontal, the height was limited to about 4 feet. I just used clothespins to secure the sprawling branches to the cage.


NOTE: Seeds for currant tomatoes appear to take longer than other types to germinate, so please be patient while waiting for the seedling to appear. Also, the seeds are small in general and it is difficult to sort out the “empty shells” that do not germinate.


Raspberry Oxheart

This is a Polish heart shaped tomato. The colour of the skin and flesh is somewhat raspberry pink. The juicy fruits are excellent for fresh consumption (a great slicer tomato) and for making your favourite sauce too.

Once you try this variety chances are that it will be on your to grow list year after year. The indeterminate plants produce fruits weighing up to 200g. A great variety to grow outside and a very popular tomato variety in the Balctic states and Russia so will accept cold conditions.

Keep watering in dry spells, especially when flowering and when the fruit is setting. Remove side shoots and stop the plant growth when 5 trusses have set.

Red Alert

Red Alert is an early cropping, very sweet, bush cherry tomato. Perfect for growing in containers outdoors. Height 45 cm. Small fruits and excellent sweet flavour..

Sow seeds thinly (10 mm deep) into a seed tray or in small pots or cells, covered lightly, watered and placed at between 10-18 Celsius on a windowsill, heated greenhouse or propagator. Sow February - April. Germination takes 8-11 days.

As soon as seedlings are large enough to handle, prick out. Transplant the seedlings into individual small pots, later on they might need to be re-potted if growing quickly and large. Make sure the leaves do not overlap. Temperatures during this stage should be 12-20 Celsius. Plant outside mid-May to June into final position. Beautiful edible feature in hanging baskets and tubs.

Roughwood Golden Plum

A good market tomato, which is a cross between Yellow Brandywine and San Marzano. Developed and stabilized by William Woys Weaver. Semi-determinate, regular leaf plant produces beautiful 2-inch 50mm, orange paste tomatoes that are meaty with few seeds and a delicate, fruity sweet flavour with a well-balanced low amount of acidity. A wonderful salad tomato and perfect for making golden sauces.

Varieties - Open Pollinated

Fruit Colours – Orange

Flesh Colours - Orange

Fruit Shapes - Plum/Pear/Piriform

Fruit Sizes - Small

Culinary Uses -Paste / Sauce / Canner / Salad

Maturities -Mid-season

Plant Types -Semi-Determinate

Leaves - Regular

Flavour - Sweet

Sallisaw Café

An early indeterminate plant producing cherry tomato on very productive vines that have a huge yield of 20mm bright red cherry tomatoes with a perfect combination of super sweet but slightly tart flavour. A great tomato variety for grazing and feasting as sweets through the vineyards



Stupice

Tomato 'Stupice' is a cold tolerant, 'potato leaved' variety from the Czech Republic that is suitable for growing outdoors or under glass. This early ripening variety produces clusters of medium, golf ball sized, red fruits with a lovely flavour. This heavy cropping cordon variety is delicious added to salads and sandwiches. Height: 200cm (79"). Spread: 50cm (20"). 

White Cherry

Early unique variety with ivory white fruits, medium sized cherry tomato a little larger than Snow White and is one of the best tasting and performing white cherry varieties available. The fruits ripen to a very pale yellow to almost white. The amount of exposure to the sun effects the amount of yellow, so more shading gives a whiter fruit. If there is good leaf cover, then you could expect almost snow white fruits. Indeterminate (cordon) 70 days

General Information


lycopersicon lycopersicum General Sowing information: Sow from late winter to early spring, approx.. 8 weeks before last frosts in your area sow at 20C just covering seed. Transplanting - heated greenhouse planting up in mid February, cool greenhouse plant up mid spring, outdoors early June after all risk of frost has passed. Transplant at 2 pairs of leaves to 7cm pots. Grow on and transplant into greenhouse border/pots or growbags. Sow seed for outdoor tomato in March-April transplant to 7cm pots and grow on, planting out after last frost. Feed after first truss has set and pinch out side shoots on indeterminate plants (cordon). Grow in greenhouse, plastic tunnel or outdoors in warm areas.

Planting Out Brassicas

My Sister-In-Law Pauline has donated her excess Cabbage, Cauliflower and Broccoli plants and I popped down to the allotment and cleared Bed 2, planted them and then installed the water pipe hoop frame over the bed and covered them up with Debris Netting to keep the Cabbage White butterfly's off them.  

It's nice gradually seeing the beds on plot 1A getting sown and planted up, it will not long and I will be able to move onto digging up and weeding the new beds on Plot 1.  

Note to self 

Get the sweetcorn started and sown in the Space Saver Greenhouse this week.
  

Sowing Seeds

During the last week I have been making more Self Watering Pop Bottle Propagators, sowing some mini & micro tomatoes, and this morning as I was up early as I have an appointment at the hospital I have sown a number of different cucumbers, some of which the seeds are getting a little old and may not germinate. 

Achocha Fat Baby
Burpless Tasty Green
Kiwano 
Miniature White 
Market More
Piccolo Di Parigi - To Pickel for my sister  

I have also sown Johnsons (Winter) Butternut Squash and Mr Fothergills David Domoney get growing (Winter) Hornet F1 Butternut Squash and Long Green Striped Marrow. 

The squash will take over the bottom end of Plot 1 again as I'm never going to get all the new beds installed this year as I'm running way behind. 

Sarah Bee asked "Interested to know what the varieties taste/look like Alan."

Kiwano connoisseurs describe the flavor of the slimy green interior as a cross between cucumber, zucchini, and kiwifruit (though as it ripens, it tastes more like a banana). A fully ripened kiwano has an orange rind with prominent spikes. To eat plain, cut the fruit in half

Miniature White-skinned, black-spined little pickling cukes. Production is high and begins very early on. Almost-bush plants that seldom run over three feet make great container plants. Delicious for fresh use, as well. This strain has none of the bitterness that has unfortunately come to be associated with the white-fruited types.

Achocha Fat Baby is remarkably easy to grow, and can be used raw in salads when small a bit like a cucumber.

It is a quick and vigorous climber and you can climb it up and over anything, including garden sheds, although it does need a sunny open spot. Definitely best outdoors though and not in a polytunnel, because it tends to take over if grown inside.

The best thing however, is that the mature fruit taste very much like green peppers when fried - yet they can be grown outdoors with ease and set masses of fruit with no effort.

To cook, simply cut open and flick out the seeds (saving a few for future planting of course) and then slice and fry just as a green pepper. Very similar taste to green peppers, just much easier to grow!

Cucumber 'Burpless Tasty Green' is a vigorous variety with impressive F1 hybrid productiveness revealing fruit which is tender-skinned and easy on the digestion!

Every cucumber reaches up to 20-30cm (10-12in) in length, is crisp, succulent and tasty. An excellent choice for sandwich fillers to offset more indigestible meat.

In growth Burpless Tasty Green shows good resistance to both powdery and downy mildew. This is good news when the greenhouse gets alternatively humid and dry which can bring mildew out in more inferior varieties. I've only ever grown these outdoors and they are lovely.

The first ever cucumber I grew and continue to grow each year is Marketmore. It's a reliable outdoor variety for those that wish to grow their own cucumbers but don’t have a greenhouse so you can enjoy the flavour you can only achieve when they are ripened in the sun and brought straight to the kitchen for preparing.

Marketmore boasts heavy crops from July from fruit up to 20cm (8in) long. Producing long fat fruit and with an impressive resistance to powdery and downy mildew, They can be a little spiky even when fully grown but they taste better than shop bought cucumbers

Cucumber Piccolo di Parigi. Green pickler 3-4 inches long. One of the first cucumbers to produce fruit and produces over a long season. Very nice taste. Use fresh or for pickles. If using transplants, start 3 weeks before the set-out date, which should be once the soil has warmed up well and the weather settled down (usually a week or so after the last frost date for your area). Put five seeds in a six inch pot; after germinating, let three remain. Cucumbers resent root disturbance so transplant carefully. Place plants three feet apart in rows six feet apart. They also do well on a trellis.

More Potatoes & Beetroots

The plan was that Emma & Andy were going to give me a hand this morning to get the rest of the spuds in the ground, but with the wife's Lupus flaring up and her stability still compromised, I asked Emma to keep a watchful eye on her Mum whilst Andy and I got on with catching up on the plot. 

Pauline my sister-In-Law supplied coffee and Andy had brought biscuits with him and we had a pit stop about half hour in from arriving 

Bed 11 was stripped, volunteer potatoes were rescued or removed and the 105 hole weed membrane was laid, then Andy took over and planted up the bed with beetroot seeds and give the bed a good watering in

The blue water pipe hoops were removed from Bed 3 and installed over the onion Bed 12 and the debris netting thrown over. 

Bed 3 was then weeded as there is a little bind weed encroachment a layer of slug pellets laid and the planting membrane laid down. Then whilst Andy planted the beetroots and then did some tidying up and weeding for me I drilled half off the holes, every other one with the hand Augur ready for the seed potatoes to go in

Once Andy had planted a row I went back and augured the holes that had not been done. Doing every other hole stops the hole you have drilled from collapsing in on itself due to the lateral force in the soil as the auger does its work.  

Bed 3 - Pentland Javelin - First Earlies June/July Second Earlies July/ Sept
Bed 4 - Desiree Maincrop - First Earlies June/July Second Earlies July/Sept Maincrop - Sept/Oct
Bed 5 - Albert Bartlett Rooster - Harvest Sept/Oct 

Hoops and netting removed from Bed 2 which needs weeding and sorting out next visit, along with Bed 1 in the background of the photo above.  

Andy left to go and pick up Emma at 11:30 and I tidied up and put away tools and then got on with planting the Charlotte seed potatoes.  

The Charlotte Potatoes were planted into square flower buckets during the last 45 minutes on the plot and placed in a bed on plot 1 in a mixture of coir and B&Q Verve Compost. Charlotte's are a very popular second early salad variety producing pear shaped, yellow skinned, waxy tubers and creamy yellow flesh of first class flavour, eaten either hot or cold. Potato 'Charlotte' holds an RHS AGM and is frequently found in the supermarket.  

I have a few more seed potatoes waiting to be planted sitting in the greenhouse I just need to round up a few more square flower buckets during my next visit and get them in. But at 12:30 it was time for me to go home to my good lady wife and cook our Sunday Lunch.

All in all a good amount of progress made in the 3.5 hours spent on the plot. I have an appointment at the hospital tomorrow despite it being May Day Bank holiday and hopefully I may be signed off back to the GP or perhaps given one final course of antibiotics.

Verve Multipurpose Compost

As I took my good lady wife and family out for an evening carvery the other night the mobility scooter had been removed from the boot and the wheelchair put in the boot instead. 

So today I took out the wheelchair and took advantage whist the boot was empty to go to B&Q to pick up some Verve Compost.

Buying 3 x 50L sacks for £11 worked out cheaper than buying the difficult to lift 125L sacks as the 50L sacks were on offer. I have 22 tomato plants to go into flower buckets in the back garden and potatoes in flower buckets to go in down the allotment so 9 sacks worth later six went to the allotment and 3 went to the back garden. 

I get away with delivering stuff to the allotment, but the wife and kids get a little paranoid about me injuring myself again or getting a secondary infection if I get down on my knees to do anything at the moment. 

  
Then after dropping off the compost at the allotment there was the joy of reloading the boot up with the mobility scooter, so useful that it breaks down into 5 pieces that a relatively easy to lift. 

My daughter Emma and future son-in-law Andy have confirmed they are coming to give me help again tomorrow for three hours in the morning and I have two more potato Planting Membrane sheets and one Beetroot planting membrane sheet ready for use and I'm hoping to catch up a little more. 



Today I've made a load more Pop Bottle Self Watering Propagators and will be getting some seeds sown and into the space saver greenhouse, I already have four different types of micro and mini tomatoes in there that I have sown during the week.      

TESCO Long Handled Weed Knife

I had to do some shopping today and now that Easter is over and the last of the Easter Eggs are being sold off at less than half price the seasonal gardening stuff is hitting the shelfs again on the seasonal aisle, and I just had to treat myself to a couple of Long Handled Weed Knifes one for the allotment and the other for home.

At £3 each they didn't break the bank, and the weed knife is one of my favorite hand tools to use, and as I have problems getting down on my knees at the moment is a sensible purchase. 

You twist the top and the inner tube is telescopic and extends making the tool extend from 690mm to 1000mm or 1m.

Care Instructions - Wipe clean with a damp cloth and dry thoroughly before storing.     

More Planting Membrane

I've spent the last few nights cutting up the 2m wide roll of weed membrane into three number 2.4x1.2m Planting Membrane and 2.4x0.8m under the Path Membrane sheets. 

My good lady wife is happy for me to take over the back of the living room rather than battle the wind outside.

I have marked up two Potato Planting Membrane Sheet with 27 holes drawn around a lid from a tub of stain remover powder detergent which measures 112mm diameter in  3 rows 300mm apart along the width with holes at 240mm centres along the length on a 2.4m x 1.2m sheet to fit my standard bed size. 

I use a 75mm diameter hand auger to plant the seed potatoes which gives me some  tolerance if the hand auger wonders a little when drilling the bores.

105 planting holes drawn around a Doritos Dip Lid which measures 85mm diameter, at 150mm apart in both directions on a 2.4x1.2m sheet which I will use for onions, beetroots etc.

Onions

Potatoes