Tomatoes help please

[littlebabybird]

OK, I know its the wrong time of year but.
I need a tomato variety that will grow outside in the south of England (surrey)
that i Will be able to make sauce out of (well for spag sauce that sort of thing, no onewill be eating them as tomatoes)
oh i forgot to say i have never grown them before, so how hard are they to grow?

[littlebabybird]

[valmarg]

If you want tomatoes for cooking, rather than eating in salads, etc, I would suggest you need to grow a 'plum' variety.  A variety I would recommend is Olivade - it is suitable for outdoor growing.  We get very good crops, the fruits are very fleshy, with very few seeds.

I get my seed from Moles Seeds (www.molesseeds.co.uk), but at £9.85 for 50 seeds is probably a few more than you were intending to grow!!  I could let you have a few seeds if you wanted to try them.

Other plum types are the various San Marzano varieties.  I have not done so well with them, compared with Olivade.

How hard are they to grow?  Very easy really, but you have to take into consideration the weather.  This year has been a dreadful year for tomatoes, and their cousins potatoes.  They have been very susceptible to blight with the very wet conditions.

If you want to try Olivade pm me with your address, and I will send you some seed, together with more information on growing them.

valmarg

[Barnowl]

I'm in London and tried various San Marzano (from Seeds of Italy)  this year but they weren't too successful.  Wasn't a good growing year for the larger fruited varieties so I'll probably give them another chance.

[cleo]

I too use Moles,well I sell plants as a hobby.

I like Principe Bhorgese,but San Marzano are also good. I`ve not tried Olivade but between us all we could share some seeds?

This year was truly awful,like others I lost every outdoor plant to blight

[jennym]

I had brilliant results last year with Incas and Roma, both plum tomatoes, suitable for cooking, puree, etc, and very heavy croppers, grown out doors in Essex.
This year was a blooming disaster, blight got the lot very early (July I think) and so the olnly tomatoes I got were sown after that and weren't plum types.

[Paulines7]

I too was successful in 2006 when I grew about 15 varieties outside.  They were absolutely loaded with tomatoes in fact they did better than those I had in the greenhouse.   This year I decided to keep the greenhouse for aubs, peppers, chillies  and cues so grew all my tomatoes outside.  Like Jenny's, they all got blight and were a complete disaster.  I won't give up though as the 2007 summer was an exception.

Why don't you try growing three of four varieties and see what does best for you Littlebabybird?   Look out for seed exchanges, many of which will be coming up on this forum in The Swap Shop over the next few months.  You may find some interesting varieties.

[elsie]

Hi, I can send you some seed I've saved this year for "Old Ivory Egg" tomatoes from The Real Seed Catalogue. (I followed their instructions, so hope they're fine) It's a pale yellow tomato, they use it for sauce or fresh, but we liked the taste so much we never got round to making a sauce. PM me your address, and I'll get some out to you.
Elsie