THE MODERN MINT BLOG
The Ten Best Tomatoes To Sow Right Now
This list will give you a chance to get away from the rightly popular, but very ubiquitous, Gardeners Delight variety of tomatoes and try something different – as well as tasty!
All of the seeds can be bought from the wonderful wonderful wonderful Real Seeds – do support them in their work…!
- Grushovska – big pink tomatoes, very tasty
- Aurora – from Siberia (yes, really!) Makes great sauces and germinates well at low temperatures.
- Tangerine – as the name suggests, it is a brilliant orange.
- Farenheit – this tomato must be seen to be believed! The fruit starts off as blue, then turns red, then black. Harvest at the purple-cherry-red stage. The purveyors of this tomato seed, Real Seeds, describe the taste as boring – “like a supermarket tomato.” Worth growing for the colour though.
- Chadwick Cherry – developed by Shakespearian actor turned Biodynamic market gardener, Alan Chadwick. Eccentric fellow, great tasting tomato.
- Millefleur – a bit different, as the tomatoes grow in grape-like clusters on a single truss two feet wide. Guaranteed to get the neighbours asking where you got it from…
- Orange Banana – a tomato salad needs lots of colour, and this plum tomato will look great with a little chopped up basil.
- Feo de Rio Gordo – a BIG TOMATO. From Seville, this translates as ugly, fat river. But then names aren’t everything.
- Green Zebra – it really is ripe when green and striped! Created in 1983 by Tom Wagner, who has been breeding tomatoes and potatoes for decades. Another yummy variety of tomato for your greenhouse.
- Tomatillo – related to the tomato, used to make chutneys, salsas and pasta sauces. From Central America.
There you have it – get sowing these wonderful varieties of tomato for something a little different to try on your plate at the end of summer.
All tomatoes featured are from the brilliant seed company Real Seeds.
10 Years Of Modern Mint
On Valentine’s day this year (2024) Modern Mint, the company I started when I moved to Essex to explore a fresh, contemporary approach to gardening, will be 10 years old. The cliche is time flies… but it does! So much has happened in a decade, from studying topiary with Charlotte Molesworth, to clipping all over the UK (and eventually in the USA and Sweden) to selling shears and secateurs at garden shows and hiding away my reticence to give talks about gardening and topiary to Horticultural Societies across the UK. Ten years feels a good time to mark a new …
Garden Masterclass Trailer – The Modern Topiarist
In 2022 I did a free video for Garden Masterclass, the Annie Guilfoyle and Noel Kingsley run website that is a treasure trove of the great and good of the horticultural world – well worth looking through all the wonderful talks they have available, like meadow-maker James Hitchmough or nurserywoman Rosy Hardy. They are certainly inspirational! Perfect for watching and dreaming up new ideas during the winter months… As a follow-up to my Topiary Provocations video (which you can see on Youtube for free) I was asked to do a video for their Masterclass series on how to make topiary. …
Charlotte Molesworth’s Garden In The FT
The lovely garden of my mentor Charlotte Molesworth is featured here in the Financial Times in the last week or so… She has been interviewed lots of times but I thought this was a particularly great piece, with some photos done at unusual angles and different parts… so well worth a read. For more on topiary by Charlotte Molesworth…