The taste of tomatoes

I remember when I first started cultivating my own tomatoes, we had an old lady next doors, who was cultivating excellent tomatoes with a delicious taste. She started decades ago with cultivating an excellent type of tomatoes in open air and every year selected the best and most tasty ones and used the seed for the next year. She managed to do this without being confronted with any of the typical tomato diseases. Unfortunately, when she died, the garden was cleared and the tomatoes disappeared. Sad. So when I started cultivating tomatoes, I first bought seeds in the garden shop. The problem then was that there were not that many different types available - "a tomato is a tomato" was the general thought. After some failures and diseases, I invested in a greenhouse and started cultivating tomatoes. And thanks to Gardeners' World, I discovered the many varieties available in the UK. What a difference compared to what you could find here in Belgium (nowadays, the situation changed).

Last year I tried for the first time "Tomato Montserrat" and "Tomato Blue Ridge Mountain". Blue Ridge Mountain was not a success - due to serious blight problems, I had to remove most of them. Montserrat was the best tomato I ever had so far, disease resistant, high yield and excellent taste.  

Outside on the terrace, I tried to cultivate Tomato Sweet 'n' Neat Cherry Red and Yellow in pots. But due to the wet and rainy weather conditions, this also failed completely because of blight. 

In a few weeks I will start sowing my 2017 tomatoes (in the vitopod): Tomato Tumbling Tom Red and Yellow, Tomato Shirley Seeds, as well as Montserrat and the two types of Sweet 'n' Neat. Because I invested last year in heating for the greenhouse, I believe it wil be easier now to control the climate also during rainy and wet periods. 

TOMATO MONTSERRAT (A HEIRLOOM TOMATO WITH CATALONIAN ROOTS), RARELY CULTIVATED OUTSIDE SPAIN. VERY TASTEFUL AND MEATY TOMATOES. HIGH YIELD - DISEASE RESISTANT.