Sweet Success

Want to grow the tastiest cherry tomatoes this year? Head gardener Lucy Chamberlain trialled 14 varieties to find the sweetest and shares her complete growing guide

- By Lucy Chamberlain. Photographs by Burpee Europe, Sarah Cuttle, Neil Hepworth, Getty, Ozgurdonmaz, Paul Debois, John Fielding, Jason Ingram and Mr Fothergill's

What is a Brix rating?

The Brix scale measures the level of sugars in plant sap or juice, as a percentage, and is used by commercial plant breeders to give an impartial, accurate assessment of sweetness. To get a measurement, we put droplets of juice from each cherry tomato variety onto the refractometer plate of a Brix meter, and the results were read from a calibrated scale. This is the ultimate test of sweetness!

Bite-sized, juicy and full of flavour, cherry tomatoes are the epitome of summer and one of the most delicious crops to grow. Popping a freshly picked cherry tom into your mouth is one of life's best treats. But if you want the sweetest fruits, which are the best varieties to grow?

We set out to discover this, last summer, when we trialled over a dozen varieties bred to be among the sweetest. All were grown in a greenhouse to boost sugar levels, and with 2021's wet summer this also kept the plants dry, helping them to evade destructive tomato late blight fungus, which runs rife in damp conditions.

We taste-tested for flavour and, for 100 per cent accuracy, donned our lab coats to measure specific sugar to sugar levels using the recommended industry standard - the Brix scale. So whether you want a conventional red-fruited variety or some yellow, orange, black or green options, we'll help you grow a successful crop of cherry toms that are the sweetest they can be.

‘Black Cherry'

This cordon variety produces large tomatoes with purple-brown skin and flesh, held in multi-branching trusses. It is open-pollinated, so if you save seed, the resulting plants are likely to be true to type.

Taste-test results These tomatoes had a pleasant soft texture and thin, crunchy skins. A good balance between sweet and acid, making the fruits nice and tangy.

'Cherry Baby'