Heritage tomatoes

My first tomatoes grew prolifically this year in the polycrub, but almost without fail the several varieties that I grew had very little flavour.

I don’t know whether it was lack of sun, as we had a pretty awful summer, or some other factor. But that acid-sweet bite that I’d been looking for that’s so lacking in supermarket tomatoes just didn’t develop.

This was true for both the small cherry tomatoes that I grew as well as the larger tomatoes, vine and bush types. Lots of fruit, but slow to ripen and not that sweet.

Except one variety that had some hope.

Every now and then in a handful of harvested fruit I’d get that hint of acid-sweet, intense flavour, and rummaging in the grow tub to find the plant label I eventually found it. They’d all got a bit tangled up together. A heritage Russian variety called Grushovka. One of several Russian bush varieties that I tried this year.

It’s one that I bought from Real Seeds with medium sized heart-shaped fruits that are more pink than brick red. It had good flavour, although the tomatoes were slow to ripen, despite advertising that they were earlies.

I’ve decided to try and save some of the seeds. Not only will this save a bit of money (a pack of ten tomato seeds from Real Seeds is about £3 plus postage, and I grew dozens of plants this year so it mounts up) but hopefully it will mean more success with plants that cope well in our conditions next year.

I’m discovering that our short seasons really restrict the success of ripening up here.

I’m fermenting the seeds from a couple of these tomatoes now for a few days. Then it’s rinsing, drying thoroughly and storing in paper bags until use next spring.

It may take me years but I’m determined to crop excellent, super-tasty tomatoes here. I know it can be done.