Your ultimate guide to growing Tomatoes from seed

Why not grow your own tomatoes for tastier fruit at a fraction of the supermarket price? Camilla Phelps recommends some great varieties for guaranteed success

- Camilla phelps

FOR anyone who wants to grow __ their own produce, tomatoes are a must-try. Not only are the fruits among the most versatile of culinary ingredients but there are also so many different colourful varieties available many that you rarely see in shops. And there’s nothing more satisfying than biting into a homegrown, juicy tomato from the garden.

If you’re a novice veg grower, it’s hard to go wrong with classics such as Gardener's Delight’ and Sungold’. But if you want to try something a little more challenging, look for heirloom varieties like Brandywine’.

Unusual colour variations are great for making salads anything but boring the stripy Green Zebra’, for instance, or Noire de Crimée’, a dark-skinned Russian-bred tomato. Options with black colouring offer the added bonus of having superfood properties, thanks to the higher levels of antioxidants present in the pigment.

Varieties that produce smaller-sized fruits have become increasingly popular understandably so, as they are easy to grow, and usually have a longer season and plentiful fruits. What’s more, there are many to choose from, with a huge variety of colours, shapes, sizes and flavours on offer.

Blight busters

Being a Mediterranean staple, tomatoes love sunshine. However, many introductions have been bred to suit the UK’s cooler, shorter summers, and to have good disease resistance – so there’s less chance of having your crop wiped out by blight. And, perhaps best of all, with modern tomato varieties you don’t necessarily need lots of space or a greenhouse. There are tomatoes to suit all sizes of garden, veg plot, patio or even windowsill.