Watch our Gardening Angel Paul, sowing our first Tomato seeds for 2012 in our Greenhouse. In this video he is sowing 4 varieties of tomatoes, Country Taste, Cristal, Sungold and Sungella. The seeds have been transfered over to a heated propagator and in about 3 weeks time we will be able to see seedlings appear and in 8 weeks time, they should be large enough to transfer to seperate pots.

For hints tips on growing tomatoes, visit our tomato growing advice page.

http://www.greenhousesensation.co.uk/advice/growing-tomatoes/

Watch our Gardening Angel Paul pricking out Piccolo tomato seedlings. When the seedlings have rooted through, he will then transfer them into a larger pot or one of our Quadgrow Planters. For more hints and tips on growing tomatoes please visit out advice page.

Perfect for growing tomatoes, the Quadgrow planter produces bigger harvests than plant pots and growbags thanks to the clever way that it keeps plants perfectly watered at all times.

A big thanks John and Diana from Somerset who have been growing tomatoes in the Octogrow and sent us a great update. Here’s what they said;

“The Octogrow has been amazing this year. We have one in the greenhouse and one outside, and the champion tomato is Brandywine, a wonderful pink-red and each fruit weighing up to 12oz so far, but bigger ones to come! (our local restaurant is now buying them). We have tried growbags, gravel trays and pots but Octogrow is definitely the answer - many thanks.”

Gee, thanks John and Diana, we're pleased that you are so happy and had a great crop.

Our first tomato to form is a Sungold which is a very sweet cherry variety and an office snacking favourite, though Emma tends to get carried away and burns her tongue on them -something to do with acid and greed!

Sungold takes its name from the colour, it ripens to a lovely golden orange. The Sungold tomato seeds were started in a heated Vitopod propagator in a heated greenhouse on December 20th and transplanted to a Hydrogrow NFT on March 25th.  The plant is already 1.5metres tall!

A word or two about San Marzano tomatoes

I'm particularly looking forward to the San Marzano tomatoes which we are growing in the polytunnel. Our Chairman and founder John M grew San Marzano tomatoes in his polytunnel last year and they tasted fabulous. This Italian plum variety is considered by many chefs to be the best tomato for pasta sauces in the world and you won't find us arguing with that!

I knew we were right to be fantatical about them last year, they even have their own website

http://www.sanmarzanotomatoes.org/

The skin is quite thick and the flavour has just the right amount of sweetness without too much acidity.

It's an indeterminate (cordon) variety, so it must be grown with supports and ours were huge last year, making several large batches of sauce. The plant looks very impressive when it's fruiting because the tomatoes which are about 3 - 4 inches long, grow close together in clusters.

In the greenhouse, the weather is warming up a little, so Paul's taken the lids off the Vitopod propagators. We still have 12 tomato plants in the Vitopods, we will be picking the best 4 for the Quadgrow veg pots at the Greenhouse Sensation office in the coming weeks.