Understanding what makes the tastiest tomatoes might help a little. The answer relates to the watering program to a significant extent i.e. if you over water then there is a risk you will make your tomatoes watery and a little bland. There are some circles that advocate dry cultivation with no irrigation. But this is a little bit of a specialist activity and you need to know what you are doing, it requires a soil mix of clay and loam with a minimum rainfall of 20″ to be effective. Not an area I am completely familiar with so if you want to know more about this then you could visit Home & Garden Publications who have an article on that exact subject.

For us lesser mortals what it comes down to is getting the level of watering right so that you get a concentrated flavor as a result. Over water and you end up with those watery, bland tomatoes mentioned earlier. Maintain your watering program so that the soil is moist, not dried out or waterlogged and there is a good chance that you will get the tasty tomatoes you are looking for. As the fruit reaches the ripening stage you can consider backing off on the watering program a little so that you err on the side of a drier soil, but again not completely dry.

Sorry I can’t help more than that it is very subjective and actually down to trial and error to an extent.

Of course the other thing that can help you with taste is selecting the right varieties and many home grown tomatoes come from the Heirloom varieties that have been kept going, not by the market gardeners, but rather the tomato growing enthusiasts that care less about transport toughness and shelf life than they do about getting the tastiest tomatoes. So go for Heirloom and there is a good chance that combined with the right watering program you will get very tasty tomatoes.

There is another source of information, and this was fed through to me by my brother in law who advised me that the UK consumer magazine he subscribes to, called ‘Which’, has stated that the tastiest tomato this year, identified through consumer trials, is the Soiux tomato; which is of American descendency and of course is one of the Heirloom varieties.

The second tastiest tomatoes are listed as being the Orkado tomatoes and while we are at it the worst and most bland tasting tomato was identified as, can you bear it, the Alicante. A firm favorite amongst many of you, I would hazard a guess. Sorry to disillusion you.

Now knowing what the tastiest tomatoes are and finding them for sale anywhere is a different matter. But I can advise you that if you would like to buy them in the UK you can get your tastiest tomatoes here, and I don’t even make any money out of it.

For anyone living in the USA you can get them here Sioux Tastiest Tomatoes and now I do make some money from this link. So if you go and buy some, thanks very much.

Orkado are much easier to find so I will leave you to hunt for them yourselves, and of course the Alicante which you can get pretty much anywhere, that is if you want the blandest tasting tomatoes on the market as reported by Which magazine and my brother in law.

When choosing, one of the most over riding considerations to take into account is what they are going to taste like, after all when you are growing tomatoes at home that is one of the primary reasons for doing so, otherwise you may as well go and get the plastic ones from the supermarket. It’s quite difficult to recommend a variety for taste because everyone’s taste is different but what a lot of people opt for are the Heirloom varieties, mainly because they are as the name suggests an older and more traditional type of tomato which are full of flavour but may not have some of the more modern characteristics built in such as disease resistance.

Talking about disease resistance and to help ensure that you actually get some lovely fruit from your tomato plant it is a good idea to pick a tomato type that has a reasonable level of resistance to disease, especially if you have had trouble in this direction in the past. Check out the seed packets and make sure that they have a natural resistance to fusarium wilt and verticillium, these are two of the most common tomato diseases that they can get from the ground.

How much space you have will determine whether you can go for a determinate or indeterminate variety, the determinate variety as the name suggests grows to a limited size usually a couple of feet to maybe three feet in height then they stop. The indeterminate type are the vine tomatoes and they will just keep going unless you prune them. I actually think that the vine type are better in smaller spaces because you can control them to a size you want and train them where you want them to go whereas with the bush tomato plants they are what they are.

Also the vine plants continue to grow fruit over a longer period as the fruit of each truss ripens. The determinate (bush) variety on the other hand tend to ripen all at once over a relatively short period.

Unless you have a greenhouse the time the fruit takes to mature becomes important, if you are going to start to see frost at the beginning of October you need to be all done by then. So it is better to go for early maturing varieties in this case.

Something like Sun Gold will mature in 65 days or so and are indeterminate so lots of fruit over a longer period.

Beef tomatoes are large and are great for a burger but they do take longer to ripen so you either have to have a long summer or a greenhouse for growing these so that you can protect them from overnight frosts.

At the end of the day tomato selection is a matter of preference and as long as you actually end up with tomatoes that you like the taste of then the job is done, so make sure you take into account these factors and you will be sure to soon be enjoying lots of lovely ripe tomatoes.

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Vine tomatoes are also known as indeterminate tomatoes or sometimes cordon tomatoes. These are the varieties that need to be pruned in order to limit the growth to a central stem consisting of around 4 to 6 trusses.

This is achieved by pinching out or pruning the side shoots and then, when there are the required amount of trusses, the main stem is cropped off at the top. If you don’t do this then you will end up with an indeterminate amount of growth with lots of small fruit that is unlikely to ripen. The plants will also be prone to problems as the side shoots will run along the ground where they can pick up and are likely to contract disease.

Another way of controlling the growth of these plants is to cultivate them in pots or grow bags, but as one would expect growing in containers is a little more labour intensive particularly when it comes to a watering system.

Bush tomatoes are the alternative tomato plant and are known as determinate because their growth is self limiting and as the name suggests are bush like in appearance. The main disadvantage with this type of plant is that they tend to produce all their fruit within a very short time frame producing a short lived glut of tomatoes. Not great for the home gardener as you can end up with lots of tomatoes you cannot use fresh and have to turn to ways of preserving the fruit such as making chutney for instance.

For this reason many home gardeners tend to stick to the vine tomatoes that fruit regularly over the whole season, particularly when they have a reasonably long summer period.

Visit Growing Red Tomatoes for more tips and advice on tomato growing in a greenhouse and to get access to expert advice that could double or triple the size of your crop of tomatoes.

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