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.