Every vegetable gardener has a particular crop in a particular year that they remember as being the very best crop ever. When Kay suggested the topic of Best Tomatoes, my mind immediately went back to 1980 when I was a first year student at Burnley Horticultural College as it was called back then. We arrived on campus at the end of January and were given a small plot on which to grow a crop of set vegetables. The assignment was to be assessed and marks given so it was serious stuff!

 The very first vegetables I planted were six tomatoes – ‘Burnley Bounty’ appropriately – and they grew and grew and grew. Unfortunately because we had planted them so late they never ripened. However at the time of assessment in May, I was thrilled that my tomato plants had reached the top of their stakes and had huge trusses of green tomatoes at regular intervals down the stems. I learnt how to make green tomato chutney that year!

 I have grown tomatoes almost every summer since then – in pots in rented accommodation and in greenhouses at workplaces – and finally in our own vegetable garden where we now live. I have tried different varieties over the years and various methods of staking, fertilising, watering and pruning. Some years the crop was fantastic and other years it was dismal. I couldn’t last a summer without homegrown tomatoes now – their taste is something really special and even my daughters can pick the taste between a store bought and homegrown tomato. 

I am happy to report that last summer was my best crop of tomatoes ever! After years of growing them in the vegetable garden and having variable results (one year I added lots of chook poo to the vegetable garden and the tomatoes were all leaf and stems and no flowers – I should have known better) I decided to grow them in polystyrene boxes. This had the effect of confining their roots and they responded by forming lots of flowers and I was picking fruit from January – unheard of in our (cool) neck of the woods, usually I have to wait until March. I am going to do the same thing this year and this is how I do it:-

I will plant the tomatoes in late October and protect them from frosts until after Melbourne Cup Day. I don’t see any point planting earlier because they just sit there. I will choose 6 different varieties including a cherry tomato because they are so great for salads. I line the boxes up beside the vegetable garden fence and fill them with a good quality potting mix. Each plant has a wire tomato plant support – these are invaluable to hold the mature plant together – much better than stakes! I will run a drip irrigation system along the top of the boxes and with current restrictions I can use this twice a week. I handwater from the rainwater tank or dam on the other days. I use a dedicated tomato fertiliser and mulch the boxes with a thick layer of sugar cane mulch. 

As the plants grow I tuck in any stray stems and attach them to the wire support with plastic loops. I only prune off any unwieldy or broken bits. By December I have to water them almost every day. Last year my plants did push their roots out into the ground which helped them to cope with a missed watering. By the time school started in February, the girls and I were visiting them every day and picking a small container of fruit each time. We kept picking until June!

 I now choose only the smaller varieties (small fruit) because our season is short. Varieties such as Apollo, Tommy Toe, Tigerella, Roma and of course cherry tomatoes ripen quickly. The bigger ones like Grosse Lisse and Mortgage Lifter take too long to ripen. I tried Green Zebra and it tasted okay but I couldn’t convince anyone else to try it! I have also grown World’s Smallest (too small), Yellow Pear (okay), Black Russian (so-so), Red Grape (tough skin) and Amish Paste (got blossom end rot). Basically I’ll try anything in the nursery as long as it’s not enormous.  

My mother and I have an informal competition to see who can have a tomato by Christmas but as she lives by the coast she generally wins. I have tried drying the smaller tomatoes in a food dehydrator and I learnt that drying them too much turns them into tomato chips. Semi-dried works better but they don’t keep as long in the fridge. I always grow basil with the tomatoes and nothing beats a fresh tomato and basil sandwich on white bread with butter not margarine! One of the simple joys of summer!