Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: grenhouse on March 03, 2010, 20:12
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Bought some seeds from DT browns the other day. Free delivery there aswell!
I bought tomatoes - Ildi and Tigerella to add to my tomato crop this year. I already grow black cherry every year (prolific and fantastic tasting!). Last year I grew yellow pear which were nice, and a few other varieties which weren't worth talking about (especially Roma!).
Anyway, DT Browns sent some trial seeds - Tomato Koralik, has anyone grown them? Cherry variety, blight resistant and will do better than most in wet weather. Sound good to me?!
Steve
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I got the seed for these on free trial from DT Brown and I know some of you are growing them as well. So, my question is.....are your plants small and frail looking compared with other varieties?
I planted a good range of toms all in the same conditions, and out of them all it is only my Koralik which do not seem to be faring very well :(
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i grew them and some other old heritage varieties 4 years ago.
never again, they were more more bother than they were worth and the fruit we did get was insipid and not worth picking.
every tomato pest and fungus made a beeline straight for them.pulled them all out and burnt them on the site.
still had time to plant suckers from 5-6 various hybrid toms, into the exact same growing plots.they cropped right through until the first frost 3rd week of november 2009.
F1 ROCKS LOL.
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Yup, compared to my other varieties they were slow in germinating and are visibly smaller, another thing I've noticed is that unlike the other varieties the main stem does not appear to be thickening up when potted on, so although the plants seem healthy I guess they do have a more frail appearance than the others.
Am still intending to give these a fair chance but must admit that Blackbob's comments on them being a magnet for pests etc is a bit worrying, am hoping they are just late developers. :)
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Difficult to say if they are that much smaller as they were planted later and took ages to germinate, though all but one did germinate. I shall be disappointed if they are as bad as you say and will let Toby know if they get diseases as he recommended them on Gardeners World!!!
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Yes, I got the same. I think they are new this year.
I sowed mine, I got 9 seeds and 8 germinated, but the seedlings were very weak. I have managed to save one that looks like it might make a good plant, and one possible.
They are growing alongside Gardener's Delight and Marmande all sowed at the same time and the others are 3-4 times as big as the Korilk
I will wait results in the summer
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Bought 2 packets of 30 seeds for 99p each, was really happy with the price as ebay had them for £2.99 for 20 seeds.
Was looking forward to planting them outside but ...... I can't find them :( looked everywhere, I put them back into the envelope they came in and I think they were thrown out with the junk mail :(
but I would like to know how everyone gets on with them.
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Wow, what a difference a week makes :blink:
After worrying that my Koralik were looking a little weedy compared to my other varieties I started leaving them out during the day and popping them into the greenhouse for the night and they have come on leaps and bounds, the stems have thickened up nicely, they have almost doubled in size and are looking really sturdy and healthy so I'm feeling quite hopeful about their chances now.
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Found them :D
Managed to get my daughter to do her annual room tidy up and there they were, on her desk, no idea how they got there :blink:
But can I plant them now or is it too late ?
Did a google search, but April looks like the last month you should start to grow tomatoes.
:(
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Found them :D
Managed to get my daughter to do her annual room tidy up and there they were, on her desk, no idea how they got there :blink:
But can I plant them now or is it too late ?
Did a google search, but April looks like the last month you should start to grow tomatoes.
:(
I don't think that a tomato seed will know that we are 3 days into May! Give it a go, later sown seeds do tend to catch up eventually and they are not that late if April is the last sowing date suggested on the packet.
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Thanks Elcie
The packet doesn't have any instructions ??? just company name, tomato name, packing date and weight ,
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according to the weather I reckon we're still in March, so the toms won't know it's may will they ;)
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according to the weather I reckon we're still in March, so the toms won't know it's may will they ;)
That's what I was thinking, but I'm not sure if they'll have time to mature :(
Anyway, I have just opened one of my packets of 30 seeds and planted 40 of them :unsure: and there is at least another 60 in the packet.
Will see how it goes ;)
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sounds like it wont cost you now't if they fail :D
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Like everyone else I got 9 seeds and 8 germinated. I eventually planted out 2 plants, one planted on the plot with Gardener's Delight and Marmande, the other at home in a pot in a flower border on its own.
The plot one has been cropping for several weeks and we have had several cereal bowls of tiny cherry tomatoes. I picked them early just as they turned, I found if I left them on the plant they dropped off and went mushy. The flavour is good.
The plant at home gets late afternoon sun only and has a lot of fruit but none have ripened yet.
NOW this week the blight struck the plot. We have been lucky this year, and I threw away over half of the GD and Marmande fruit, bringing the rest into the house to try to ripen off or do something with. The Koralik is relatively untouched, just one or two fruit showing blight signs, so I left it in to see what would happen.
The only negative comments I would make are;
Poor germination and weedy plants, 9 seeds 2 surviving plants.
And the big one. They seem to have a horizontal habit sending many branches shooting out all over the ground. I think they would be much happier as a tumbler hanging in a basket or suchlike. It would be easier to keep the slugs of too.
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Have to say, all mine survived and I gave several of them away. The ones I kept certainly sprawled, but because the dog pinched all the labels, I didn't know what was what till they fruited. They are certainly small, and prolific, and taste nice raw or cooked. They have no sign of disease even though I lost all my "standard" sized toms to blight the koralik are disease free. :)
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Got the new DT Browns catalogue and noticed it said that they had decided not to sell Koralik seeds as they had poor germination rates amongst other issues. Mine weren't very successful, unlike 'ildi' which were amazing. 80 toms on a truss and they have been hung in my garage for a week now still looking good. Apparently can keep for upto 3 weeks in a garage.
Steve