-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Our supposedly ‘Gardener’s Delight’ – Small but Supersweet Irish Version
£2.67 Tomatoes - Vine: Cherry -
-
Vine Tomato Seed : Cherries
These are our Smaller-fruited Vine Tomatoes. Vine tomatoes are probably what most people think of as normal tomatoes in the UK. We really like tomatoes – and grow loads of them every year – but only the very best make it into the catalogue! Choose varieties marked “EARLY” for outdoor growing.
Vine Tomatoes just want to grow up and up and up:
Very lanky plants to about 6 or even 8ft tall, and need a very tall stake or string to support them. The side-shoots don’t flower very much and need to be “pinched out” otherwise the plant puts all its effort into a tangly mess of stems rather than fruit.
Sowing Information
Tomatoes grow quite well in the UK, but they come from a hotter climate than ours, and are used to longer summers, so you do need to start them early, indoors with a bit of heat, and they are usually grown under cover. Also, the seeds won't germinate if they get cold at night for just a few hours, no matter how warm the daytime is. The limit is about 15C - which is very common overnight on a windowsill or unheated greenhouse, so take them away from the window overnight.
(swipe to scroll)
Blue Fire
A very unusual tomato that starts out deep blue and then ripens to red and black, eventually becoming covered with gold splashes.
Originally from the tomato collection of Bill Minkey, we have been selecting it for improved flavour and more consistent fruit size.
Although good for a blue tomato, still not an amazing taste, and this is definitely one to grow for appearance more than flavour.
20 seed £2.70
Chadwick Cherry
This is a wonderful cherry tomato. A mid sized bright red cherry, it is really, really good, quite possibly one of the tastiest we have, and is the one we always pick out for eating at lunch during our tomato-deseeding sessions.
The plants make long trusses with large numbers of really attractive, bright red tomatoes that are right at the top end of the size range for a cherry type. It has become a new favourite of ours.
Bred by eccentric and visionary horticultural genius Alan Chadwick, who in 1967, and at the age of 58, gave up being a Shakespearian actor in South Africa and instead joined the University of Santa Cruz in California - to create and run their new on-site Farm & Garden project, run on egalitarian biodynamic principles. And as well as in inspiring a whole generation of market gardeners, he created this wonderful cherry tomato.
Sweet and firm cherry, great flavour and high yield. Picture show a fantastic crop of them near Cardigan in Wales.
20 seed £2.81Chocolate Cherry
This is a new variety we intoduced in 2013. A very sweet cherry tomato, with lots of purple-brown fruit about 1 inch across.
You should get about 6 to 8 fruit per truss, and they keep well after picking. As well as the unusual colour, we think that this is an especially tasty variety, nicely sweet and fruity with a good balance of acid.
Selected for good flavour. Oliver Harbury got first prize with these!
20 seed £3.17
Galina - SUPER- EARLY SWEET YELLOW CHERRY
A hugely productive cherry from Siberia, and we are really impressed by it - very sweet flavour balanced by good acidity.
The bright yellow cherry fruit are in neat bunches, and don't fall off when ripe, which makes picking easier.
It is early to get going (not surprising given where it comes from!), but just as importantly, it fruits over a long period – it just keeps on going forever , long after most other plants have stopped fruiting.
Early yellow cherry. Grow as a vine but let a couple of shoots develop for highest production.
Makes amazing yellow tomato soup or even yellow ketchup, too!
20 seed, organic. £2.98
Gardeners’ Ecstasy -AMAZING FLAVOUR, EARLY
This is a wonderful variety bred a few years ago by our late friend Tony Haig - mathematician, astronomer and gardener at Brithdir Mawr Community, who named it 'Gardeners Ecstasy' because it tasted even better than 'Gardeners Delight'.
A cross between Dr Carolyn Pink and Irish Gardeners Delight, we find it combines excellent flavour and good productivity: hundreds of cherry tomatoes with a delicious mix of sweetness and acid.
18 seed £2.90
Golden Crown (aka “Goldkrone”)
A lovely heritage yellow-orange cherry tomato, with a particularly good flavour.
We're pleased to have some seed of this - it was reccommended to us by John Bertinant , a seed dealer who for many years was a supplier of great tomato seed from Eastern Europe. When he retired, he sent us his Golden Crown, telling us that we really had to add it to the catalogue as it had such a great flavour.
Tasty golden yellow cherry tomato, now becoming rare.
22 seed £2.49Millefleur
A centiflor vine tomato variety developed by Alan Kapuler of Peace Seeds, from a cross made by his daughter Kusra. They really do make hundreds of translucent yellow tomatoes on a single truss. Each fruit is about 3/4 inch across and they're great in salads or munched straight off the plant.
This one is really tasty and beautiful.
20 seed, organic. £2.92
Our supposedly ‘Gardener’s Delight’ – Small but Supersweet Irish Version
This version was originally from a small seed collection in USA, labelled 'Irish Gardeners Delight'. It has definitely got smaller fruit than what we would normally expect, and we're pretty sure now that it's not really 'Gardeners' Delight' 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 great. 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 any more, but many visitors to the gardens pointed out that it was one of the best cherries they'd ever tasted, so we thought we ought to leave it in the catalogue! And it is now one of our most popular. Get your seed now, you won't be disappointed.
This variety slows down if we have a cool spell in late spring/early summer, but it starts growing again once temperatures rise again.
20 seed £2.67Primabella - BLIGHT RESISTANT!!
We’ve been trialling a range of tomatoes outdoors, to find out which will produce well and withstand the inevitable late blight which is the main barrier to outdoors tomato growing in the UK climate.
We’re always sceptical about blight resistance, before now we’ve not found any supposedly resistant varieties that we’ve felt worth recommending. Primabella though has done extremely well for us, with the plants still growing through into November, even if a bit battered by gales and rain.
Photo below taken outdoors on our Pembrokeshire field November 16th, still ripening a last few fruit. We find the flavour excellent, they are quite fleshy for a cherry tomato and as a result are also very resistant to splitting even in wet weather.
Be sure to keep pinching out the sideshoots on this one, as it is very vigorous.
18 seed, organic. £3.19
Stupice - EARLY VINE
This fantastic 1954 variety from Eastern Europe is the earliest of all our vine tomatoes.
We had a rare tomato trial in 2010 and this one was noticeably earlier than the others; we got a great crop simply in large pots on our patio, despite the rainy summer. The plants are vigorous and produce red fruit with an excellent flavour. Ideal for outdoors, but also good in a greenhouse for early crops.
Larger than a cherry tomato, but not as big as a beefsteak type, the fruit are about two inches across and ideal for salad use.
Fast-fruiting variety for shorter summers, ideal if you grow your tomatoes outdoors.
22 seed £2.77