Weeding the Web

Garden veg review: Tomato Mountain Magic from Thompson and Morgan

If you want to be driven mad by a tomato, I'd say plant the Red and Yellow Currants I mentioned a few weeks ago. With further experience and even though they taste good, I can categorically say I find them Very Annoying, being so fiddly to pick. However, I do have one other variety on the go, thanks to Thompson and Morgan who supplied three plants of Mountain Magic. This F1, cordon-trained tom promises freedom from blight while rewarding you with the rich flavour of heritage varieties. 

Tomato Mountain Magic F1 from Thompson and Morgan. Fully blight resistant.

It's been developed specifically with outdoor growers in mind and, apparently, carries the late blight-busting Ph-2 and Ph-3 genes which means full protection against all current British strains including Pink6 and Blue13, which are the most virulent to hit UK crops. It also has in-built genetic resistance to both verticillium and fusarium wilt and cracking.

Mine went into an area where I haven't grown tomatoes before, because the currant varieties are occupying my favourite south-facing wall. But as the wall also offers some rain protection and therefore reduces the incidence of blight, perhaps it's just as well I had to find somewhere else - a sunny but more exposed area. They're planted in black bottomless buckets to allow them a less clay-ey soil to start off in (and it means I've got compost in situ to spread on the beds after they're finished) and to help the sun warm them up faster.

They started to come through at the end of August, somewhere between the size of a cherry and a bog standard tomato and, as you can see, they're good-looking - uniform, evenly coloured. But I wouldn't say they're zinging with flavour. They're described as being highly rated against the flavour of heritage tom Brandywine but they lack depth and tang for me. However, the taste is pleasant and sweet (its grape tomato heritage gives it a high sugar level, say T&M), with a moderate tomato taste. It's also thick-skinned, which I've noticed is often a feature of blight-resistant varieties. 

So far I've had one Smith period this year, notified to me via Blightwatch on 6th September and, here, three weeks later, I can say there's absolutely no sign of the disease. Overall they're a strong, sturdy variety (in fact, I've had to wrestle a bit to get the plants to release the harvest), so if you find toms difficult because of blight, I'd say Tomato Mountain Magic is definitely worth growing. Taste-wise, I'd always head for Harbinger.

Red Currant, Yellow Currant - heritage tomatoes from Dobies

Back in March I received a surprise package. Dobies sent samples from their new heritage vegetable range, selected by last year's winner of The Great Allotment Challenge, Rob Smith. My bounty included three plants each of Tomato Red Currant and Tomato Yellow Currant, and two Honey Boat squash plants.

Tomato Red Currant from Rob Smith's heritage veg selection from Dobie's

To be honest, I could do with more of this sort of thing. Not that creating a lush plantation on an underspecified windowsill doesn't try the patience of family members when it comes to drawing the curtains. (And lush it was; they took off from the moment I potted them on and I potted on again before daring to put them into their final positions outside.) But it was great to have tomato plants so early as I rarely bother to sow tomatoes until April and certainly not squash, for the very reason that I don't have a greenhouse.

Hence, for me, I am now well ahead of my usual game. This, in a year when I heard the Gardeners' Question Time panel bemoaning the weather and the fact that they hadn't yet harvested tomatoes.

Hah! I preened. I've gathered at least a hundred.

Sounds good, huh? But did you note the name? Red/Yellow Currant. Somehow, I just thought these would be a whimsically named cherry. I was wrong. The names are trade-description accurate, as proven by the redcurrant which kindly agreed to model.

A redcurrant and a Red Currant. Quite a few of the tomatoes are smaller than this one.

There's actually quite a lot to be said for them. Picking is a bit of fiddle, as their size makes them easy to drop and the languishing foliage means that 1) they don't necessarily fall through to the soil and 2) they're hard to find again. Soup, sauce and stuffing are obviously out, but I'm finding it rather seductive to just toss a handful onto a salad without cutting and deseeding. Ditto risottos.

Taste-wise they're lovely warm from the vine, with a good zing to balance the sweetness, their size providing a pop of flavour on the tongue. Out of the fridge? Still zingy, not quite so flavoursome, but that's tomatoes in general.

I seem to be growing from one extreme to the other. Last year was an experiment with Gigantomo, and generally they were more useful. It's a question of balance. Six plants of the two Currants means that I don't have room for many other varieties. One plant wouldn't be enough, I reckon, if you wanted a good showing in salad on a regular basis. But if you have room for two or three, depending on your desire to consume, that would probably be enough to justify them as a tasty, no-preparation addition to your harvest.

Tomato Yellow Currant, available from Dobie's

The Currants are new and exclusive to Dobie's but, given the laissez-faire approach to naming veg varieties, I wouldn't be surprised if the red one were an extremely close relative of Victoriana's Sweet Pea Currant tomato. Their website gives a description which pretty much hits the spot.

We cannot pretend that this is a tidy variety to grow; you are best to just contain the growth within a circle of strings rather than try to formally train and thin.

There was certainly something about my plants which stopped me from growing as a cordon. I just let them get on with it. Branches tend to be long and it's most definitely a sprawler. However, Victoriana does add that, if you do grow as a cordon, you'll have tomatoes more the size of a cherry variety, which might appeal more to some.

Meanwhile Rob Smith, who has, he says, a passion for heritage veg with their overtones of childhood tastes and helping at his grandfather's allotment, has chosen some other tempting varieties for his range from Dobie's.

Honey Boat Squash

I fear I won't be discovering the joys of Honey Boat, though. One plant has romped away with plenty of female flowers but the other (entirely my own fault) is stunted through neglect and only just beginning to flower. On the plant that's thriving, the fruits are withering away. I'll try hand pollination to see if that helps, and perhaps I might get some sort of harvest by the end of the year, but I'm kicking myself for not doing this sooner. as I was really looking forward to trying a squash that promises to be "easier to grow, and sweeter than a butternut squash." Rob adds:

It’s more productive too... The fruits are super sweet with firm, deep orange flesh, the ideal size to serve 2 people. It’s also got its own built-in best before date, as the green stripes will disappear as the squash ages, so you’ll always know which to eat first.

Well, I can certainly confirm there are loads of fruit (all shrivelling). Actually, to add insult to injury, I won't be getting any other squash either. The Turks Turban I bought in to make up for my inadequacies was razed to soil level by voracious molluscs.

Moral: never forget to replace night-time protection, even once.

Ah, well, there's always next year...

 

Gigantomo tomatoes taste update

My main tomato crop this year, as some of you may remember, has been Gigantomo, the tomato that, with care, promises to grow to gigantic proportions. 

Gigantomo tomatoes are surprisingly difficult to pick as they are held really strongly on the plant.

That was never going to happen for me. My heaviest tomato so far has weighed in at 12 oz, nowhere near Joe Atherton's 1.755kg (3lb 13.9 oz) winner in the Heaviest Gigantomo Tomato Class at Harrogate Autumn Show this weekend.  A man who appears to possess the stoicism demanded by growing giant veg, he's looking moderately pleased with his £1000 reward in the video below, where he discusses how this came off a late-sown plant with the fruit set on the first truss :

(If you can't see the video, visit it here.)

As I didn't pare down the harvest to one per plant (though they pretty much thinned themselves down to one per truss), the fruit vary quite substantially in size, which is no bad thing when you have different needs for different recipes.

As you can see, the flesh is very dense, with few seeds. I was fairly sure it wasn't going to have much to offer taste-wise, but I'm glad to say I'm wrong.

Some might say it hasn't quite enough acidity, but I'm rather a convert. Kept out of the fridge, it's got a full, sweet tomato flavour and not only goes well in salads, but cooks down to a really lovely sweet tomato sauce. I simmered slices of courgette with it and really didn't need anything else apart from a bit of salt and pepper. 

My plug plants were supplied by Van Meuwen and I think this is one that I'll definitely be growing again.

Gigantomo advice - how to grow big tomatoes

Mine's bigger than yours. Is there something in our DNA that makes humans want to make things really, really big? It's a spirit that's thriving in the City of London, with proposals recently announced for a new building only 5m shorter than the Shard. And there'll be plenty of rivalry at Harrogate Autumn Flower Show 18-20th September, when a new class will be judged on Giant Vegetables.

Included in the competition are the National Gigantomo Championships. The prize at stake is pretty big itself, unlike most veggie show rewards - £1000 prize for the heaviest tomato, with £5000 added if it breaks the world record at the time of the show. That record is currently 7lb 12oz (it was a 'Delicious' tomato).

*Rapidly calculates*  That's something in the region of 3.5 bags of sugar in weight - and probably bulkier because a bag of sugar is denser than a tomato.

Blimey.

Now, I was lucky enough to receive five Gigantomo plug plants from Van Meuwen, this year. Told of their giant dimensions, I raised a sceptical eyebrow. "But do they taste any good?" I queried, with what I hoped was a suitably chummy, ho-ho-we-all-know-the-problem-with-this-sort-of-thing tone of voice. The charming young man at the Press Event in February took it on the chin (it was late afternoon. Of course he hadn't been asked this before) and assured me that, actually, they taste very good.

All five are in the Tomato Growing Position - front of house, full sun, south-facing. Growing strongly. But I'll just reassure any competitively minded Gigantomo growers out there that the chances of my getting my mitts on the £6000 (or even £1000) are vanishingly small.

The strain has already made enough of a splash to have been reported in the Mail Online. These plants, the article says, will grow to six feet. Hmm. Not in my buckets, I fear. These have proved totally adequate for tomatoes up to now, but I sense disappointment in their current residents. The plants wilt with alarming rapidity, even after a darn good soaking the evening before. A watering twice a day seems to be what they're demanding.

How to Grow Big Tomatoes

However, for anyone who is more optimistic than I, Van Meuwen have sent out helpful instructions on how to grow the biggest tomatoes. It would apply to all tomato plants, pretty much. Bob Flowerdew said on BBC Radio Four's Gardeners' Question Time recently that the weight of fruit (on an apple tree, in his instance) will remain constant, whether you thin down the fruit or not, meaning that the more ruthless you are with thinning, the larger the fruit you'll grow. It only remains to ask yourself, How big do I want my tomatoes?

The megablooms seem to come on an extra thick stalk

That aside, this is what needs doing:

1. Understand megablooms. It's a blossom that's got more flower petals than the others because it's made up of two or more blossoms. This is the tomato that will grow and grow, because it's actually two or more tomatoes fused together. (Every Gigantomo truss seems to have a megabloom. On mine, it seems to start off on a twisted stalk that gradually uncurls. You should keep only four trusses on each plant.
2. Allow only four trusses per plant.
3. Thin these down to one tomato per truss (obviously, with Gigantamo this should be the megabloom tomato, but I've noticed that this has happened naturally on a lot of the trusses. Quite a few blooms have aborted, leaving one tomato to grow.)
4. Apply a mulch of manure up to four inches deep, if grown in soil, or as much as possible around the top of the container.
5. Stake strongly. It's also suggested that you cage the plants with chicken wire. (I prefer that green-coated wire fencing that Americans call "dog-wire". It allows the tomato leaves to poke out through the large rectangular holes. Even so, one of the cages has already toppled over and I've had to tie it to the wall behind.)
6. Support individual fruit with an old stocking, or anything that creates a little hammock for it.
7. Give them constant moisture to avoid blossom end rot (oh, dear).
8. Feed weekly - and foliar feed twice weekly with seaweed solution. (Gigantomo not only drink like topers, but eat like gluttons.)

All this should give you something to attract the judges' attention at any veggie show.

Gigantomo tomato plant, caged in as an alternative to staki

As I say, unless something very surprising happens over the next few weeks, my tomatoes will be no threat to anyone. My aim is to grow larger than average tomatoes and hope they taste good. However, if your eye is glinting at the goal of riches, here's what to do if your Gigantomo looks like a winner:

Picking a Show-Winning Giant Tomato

Measure your potential prize-winner until it stops swelling and then pick it when still pinkish, unless the competition is imminent. If it ripens far too early, pick and keep in the fridge for up to three weeks at 8-10 C.

Good luck!

For a follow-up on the competition and what I thought of my crop, see my later post Gigantomo tomatoes taste update.

Which? Gardening annoy Soil Association with results of research

Ouch! The latest Which? Gardening magazine crashed through the letterbox yesterday, having blazed a trail in the day's newspapers.

In a two-year research project, Which? found home-grown organic produce to be no more nutritious or tasty than non-organic. In some cases it came off distinctly worse.

Here we go again.

Interested parties have leapt to defend organic. According to the Daily Mail, the Soil Association has branded the research "irresponsible". Actually, a quick look at the Soil Association's press release shows that it's not the research per se that it deems irresponsible, but the use of pesticides that have been implicated in the rapid decline of the bee population and the use of metaldehyde.

Much is made of the result that tasters preferred the non-organic tomatoes, but several thoughts come to mind. Taste is affected by the soil in which a plant is grown, and by the water and feed it receives...

How to combat tomato blight

My very own sketch of Bob Flowerdew's blight protection shelter

So, talking about Blightwatch as we were, supposing there is a blight warning? What can you do? 

 

The Potato Council offers a pdf of Leisure Growers’ Advice on how to avoid blight, which includes photographs to aid identification. In their words, “The most effective control for the spread of infection is warm, dry and sunny weather.”

But, in the absence of that, they suggest repeated applications of copper-containing fungicides, such as Dithane 945 and Bordeaux Mixture.

How to control Potato Blight is one of the Top Ten subjects that come up again and again on Gardeners’ Question Time.

Matthew Biggs suggests various tactics, most of which you should have implemented before the dreaded warning. These include avoiding sheltered sites (presumably because it reduces the possibility of a hot and humid patch with its very own Smith periods), planting wider apart, and looking for early signs on neighbours’ crops and spraying with Bordeaux mixture before the blight reaches yours.

Blightwatch - so you know what's coming

I recently received my second Blightwatch Alert of the year. If you grow tomatoes and potatoes and haven’t already signed up to this service, you should as, once you have, you’ll get warnings of Smith periods, which are perfect times for blight to flourish.

For anyone who doesn’t know, a full Smith period occurs when the temperature during at least 2 consecutive days is 10°C or more, and relative humidity is greater than 90% for at least 11 hours each day.

Back in August 2007, I wrote about Blightwatch and Smith periods for Organic Gardening magazine (sadly defunct) and spoke to Steve Gerrish, Information Resources Manager at the British Potato Council. He said, “If there’s a spore on a leaf at the beginning of a Smith Period, then it will have germinated by the end, but it’s all risks and probabilities. A blight spore requires free water on a leaf in order to germinate. The Smith period is an estimate of a high-risk period.” It’s also why you should always water tomatoes at the base, so the leaves don’t harbour any “free water”.

So, even if you receive a warning, the occasional Smith Period isn’t a reason to panic, as it won’t automatically result in blight ravaging your plants. However, if periods occur every 7 to 10 days, that’s serious, as blight takes 7-10 days to develop and sporulate (excellent word, must repeat it)…sporulate again, so it thrives in such conditions.

Blightwatch also alerts you to Near Misses, when conditions are considered almost perfect. These need to be noted too, as your plants may be situated in a spot that, with the help of such climatic conditions, nurtures its own personal Smith periods.

So, forewarned is forearmed! But forearmed with what?

Something for the next blogpost, I think.

 

Garden projects for the DIY-challenged

Beware Easter weekend. It’s dangerous. It is when we get our strongest urge for home improvement.

Indeed, a couple of years ago, Asda claimed to have pinpointed the exact time it all kicks into action: between 10 and 11 am today, Good Friday, when I guess we all rush through the check-outs clutching nails and two-b’-two. They even tried (in rather poor taste, given that it’s a major religious festival) to rename it Fix-It Friday.

The danger arises, as Jeff Randall wrote in The Daily Telegraph, in “a chronic disconnect between the ambitious DIY-er’s expectations and his ability to hit the nail on the head.” According to RoSPA, over the average bank holiday (and Easter weekend is longer than average) DIY accounts for 1400 serious accidents.

Naturally, insurance claims tend to double. Churchill Insurance, on Love Your Home, say the least damage occurs on Good Friday (when people are out, buying supplies), the most on Easter Monday, presumably when the improvement is switched on and everybody gets electrocuted.

So, for all of you who feel the urge to build something, but secretly understand your own butter fingers, I’ve found what might be your ideal building material.