Tomato Country Taste

Round Red Beefsteak F1 Hybrid tomato on Indeterminate plants.

Description

This was a mistake. I don’t (in general) grow F1 hybrids (except for attempts to defeat blight). I picked this up in a garden centre and didn’t read the packet properly.

My reason for not growing F1 hybrid tomatoes is because I have yet to find an F1 hybrid that is better in taste, or performance than a similar Heritage or Open Pollinated tomato. The only difficulty with this statement is that there are so many Heritage/Open Pollinated cultivars that to go through them all (even for a restricted type of tomato) is extremely difficult.

Anyway, Country Taste is a slightly larger than average standard red tomato (most descriptions seem to define it as a beefsteak but when we grew it it was quite small for a beefsteak) (there are hundreds of red beefsteak tomatoes which makes one wonder even more what the value of an F1 Hybrid is). We grew them (because we’d bought them) in 2009 and found them nothing special in flavour or productivity so we didn’t bother again.

This may seem a little harsh but I have a feeling that F1 Hybrids are deliberately grown and promoted by seed suppliers to force growers to spend more than they need to on the individual seeds and be unable to save their own seeds which (in my opinion) is all part of the fun of growing tomatoes, not so much to be able to breed different varieties but to be able to provide your own seeds, plants and crop.

I make one exception (which you’ll read about elsewhere). Blight is endemic at my allotment and it is impossible to grow tomatoes outdoors. So, I keep trying the various F1 Hybrids (Mountain Magic, Crimson Crush) that are advertised as “Blight Resistant” to try and find a variety which allows me to grow tomatoes outdoors at the allotment.

2017 Update: After a number of years trying, I’ve given up trying to grow tomatoes outdoors at the allotment.