[totalnovice]

Hiya,

Can anyone reccommend to me a decent tomato for fresh eating and for using in sauces/preserving etc? I have tried both Roma and San marzano - although i find bush toms a bit difficult to deal with. Marmande was ok, but not such a brilliant flavour.

Any advice/reccommendations welcome.

Thanks in advance.

[m1ckz]

personaly i like the old,,,moneymaker,,,,,they seem very reliable,

[shokkyy]

I've done Roma bush and liked them a lot for passata, though they are big boisterous plants. This year I did San Marzano and was very pleased with them. I did notice, though, that some seed companies were calling them bush and others were calling them cordon, so I did a few in pots and a few in a bed. They definitely seemed to do better as a cordon and gave me a good crop of very nice meaty tomatoes for passata/cooking.

For eating, my personal favourite is Gartenperle cherries in baskets. Even in the horrible weather we've had this year, they've given me a huge crop of beautiful sweet cherries. They're really tough and easy plants and very prolific, earliest to crop and they're still cropping heavily even now.

[JayG]

If you can wait a bit longer I shall be running the "Home grown tomato survey" again very soon which will hopefully produce even more member's opinions about different varieties than last year. 

(If you can't wait, last year's survey results are HERE.) 

[mumofstig]

If you are asking for one tomato to do both, it's a bit difficult.
Toms for cutting fresh are bred for taste when raw (although sometimes I wonder ) and this involves having seeds, as the seeds carry the acid part of tomato taste.

Tomatoes for cooking are bred to have less seeds in and most don't taste of anything much, until cooked.

You can make sauces with the salad toms, of course, but you won't get the intense tomato flavour without using a sauce/paste tomato IMO...........I'd never recommend any of the tomatoes you have tried for eating fresh, and really can't think of one 

[totalnovice]

Thabnks for the replies - i thought i was probably asking too much!

I shall try and be patient and wait for the 2011 tomato poll.