I thought it would be nice to feature some of our new varieties on the blog. De Colgar tomatoes are storage tomatoes, in fact the name means 'to hang up'. We also have a variety called Longkeeper, which does the same thing. However in my opinion De Colgar has a far superior flavour. One of the projects I would like to do this year, but probably won't get around to, is to compare the keeping qualities of some of our old favourites, with these varieties. I think Moneymaker would do well, I have often been picking tomatoes out in the polytunnel until Christmas, and Moneymaker Gardeners Delight seem to hang in there very well. In fact the polytunnel seems to be the best place to store tomatoes unless we get serious frost like we did this year which is not good for tomatoes. They also seem to store best on the vine. Again I want to look at this more closely, but putting them in a drawer doesn't seem to work very well. I usually discover a gooey mess sometime later, a windowsill suits me better, and I am more likely to remember them. (Note to self, I need more windowsills.) Has anybody got any tomato storage tips?
The top picture I found on the internet which shows vines hanging up under a roof, somewhere that I expect doesn't get much frost.
De Colgar produces tall vines easily reaching the top of the polytunnel. The fruit are mediu sized and hard even when ripe with a high dry matter content. They are good sliced with a sweet tomato flavour, not much acid, and make a thick sauce.
Below are a selection of the polytunnel tomatoes. The new (to us) varieties, came from Jean Perry of Glebe Gardens. These are Chocolate Stripe, Paul Robeson, (not in the picture because we ate them all) Ananas Noir, Federle and Vintage wine. The others are old favourites whose seeds we had run out of.
I really like both Paul Robeson and Chocolate Stripe, which are red/black beefsteak varieties. Like Black Crimea and Black Russian they seem to manage good flavour, even in cool sunless summers.
