Blight resistant tomatoes

Need to know the best time to plant?

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Barry
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I think we have all tried blight resistant tomatoes in recent years and found them somewhat disappointing.

Last year, for example, I tried Mountain Magic, which kept going months after non-resistant varieties had been wiped out. Sadly, though, the taste was nothing to write home about.

I'm fortunate enough to live reasonably close to Victoriana Nurseries at Challock and, last season, came across the Primabella variety. I tried several of these. Not only do they long outlast any tomato, even with rampant blight in the area, but the medium-size fruits are very palatable, too, unlike the utterly bland taste that Mountain Magic has.

All plants will eventually succumb to blight, but my Primabellas hung on well into the early autumn, long, long after everything else around them had died.

Victoriana reckons they are the most blight resistant tomatoes around and I would agree with that.

The nursery sells them both as seeds and mail-order plants, so do give them a try and tell me what you think. Their plants are usually dispatched from mid-April onwards.
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Primrose
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Thank you for this Barry. I’m continually on the hunt for blight resistant tomatoes and have just ordered some seed and can give them a trial this summer as not ready to sow my outdoor tomatoes yet. Are they F1 hybrids. They don,t seem to be listed as such as F1 Ferlines are.

Can you tell me a little more about the “medium size” description? I grow Gardeners Delight as a cherry sized tomato. Are the fruits bigger than these and more of a “slicing salad tomato” size, like a Moneymaker? I like to grow a variety of sizes and depending on whether they’re more of a cherry tomato size or an ordinary salad size will influence how many of them I decide to experiment with.

PS. Just rechecked and they’re listed as open pollinated.

Incidentally their Tomato Tasting week in August looks a splendid idea and an excellent opportunity for tomato growing enthusiasts to taste a wide selection of varieties. I expect many of us have previously “wasted” a growing season growing a new variety, only to be disappointed by the size, texture or taste of something so opportunities like this are very valuable.
Barry
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I've grown Ferlines before and was not impressed; they went down quite quickly along with my other tomatoes.

I don't know whether Primabellas they are an F1 or not, but according to the supplier, they were developed in Germany.

They were supposed to be cherry size tomatoes, although I would say mine were about 33% bigger than a standard cherry, but not quite as big as a standard "heritage" style tomato (the sort we used to get in the 1960-1970s and were the only size of tom you could then buy in the shops).

Having said that, my allotment produced stunning yields of everything last year. It's heavy clay and just two years old, having had lots of organic matter put in it. 30 years ago, it was a farmer's field, but has lay fallow ever since, so that may be the reason for the larger than cherry sized fruit.
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Primrose
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My Ferline last year went down to blight before my Moneymakers or Alisa Craig. I agree, their flavour is nothing spectacular although I suspect the amount of sun they receive whilst at the ripen8ng stages probably also influences the flavour of all tomatoes to a certain extent.

I’m old enough to remember the bog standard tomatoes of earlier decades so its been fun experimenting with the cherry sized ones and also the yellow and orange ones as well as the “black” Crimean varieties. I think the greenhouse grown tomatoes we can buy in winter now have a better flavour than the winter tomatoes my mother would occasionally buy in my childhood but in those days tomatoes would often disappear from our menu in winter months entirely and only start reappearing again in early summer, either because they were in short supply or because even if you could buy them the flavour was so awful it was money wasted! These days you can always buy something out of season because worldwide cargo means it’s currently in season somewhere else!
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