This morning I was at B&Q Leytonstone High Road to buy some tomato plants. The "Heritage Tomato" "Tigerella" is, according to the label: "heavy cropping variety produces small red and yellow striped early ripening fruits throughout the summer""
Spot the important bit of information missing: what the tomatoes taste of! Which I'd have loved to have known before I brought them. But then it was the only variety on display, so I didn't have any choice!
We are fobbed off with tasteless vegetables in the supermarket, and now in nurseries and garden centres, etc.
Two years ago I was at a garden centre hoping to buy strawberries and there was a selection of 5 different varieties. The labels for each variety mentioned the colour of the flowers, but not what the strawberries would taste of.
Even quite a few of the descriptions of vegetables and fruit in the Organic Gardening Catalogue don't mention taste, but some do and I choose one of those.
Unfortunately, as I am mean on heating my house, growing tomatoes from seed is not practical. For a few years I grew them on a window ledge beside my desk. But the new offices don't have suitable window ledges.
I just want the tomatoes I grow to taste of tomatoes. Time will tell.
I've potted them up into bigger pots and put them in the conservatory until May.
I prefer to grow tomatoes from seed but it isn't always possible, so I buy mine from a car boot sale. The taste may not always be much better than you would buy from B&Q, but if one has to buy them as plants, better to get them at a car boot than B&Q, cheaper for one thing. Same goes for beans, cucumber plants, flowers, etc.
ReplyDeletePete.