Workbook: Growing and roguing

Solanum lycopersicum

Family: Solanaceae

Tomatoes are generally divided into bush (determinate) or cordon/vine (indeterminate) types.  Bush tomatoes have several branches, each of which terminates with a flower truss, so the plant forms a bush.  Cordons generally have a single major shoot, with trusses (and side shoots) from the axil between leaf and stalk, so the main shoot may form a very long vine.  Both classifications (like the distinction between greenhouse and outdoor types) are somewhat arbitrary. Tomatoes are easy to save seed from and, with a few exceptions, easy to keep true to type.

• Grow as you would for eating. In Britain tomatoes are treated as annuals, producing seed in the same year that they are planted.
• Tomatoes can usually produce seed outside, though varieties that are slow to grow and ripen do best in a greenhouse or polytunnel.
• Tomatoes are inbreeders and many seed savers successfully maintain varieties by saving from just two or three plants, though it is best to save from at least six plants.
• Remove any plants that look sickly or have different foliage to the rest, or any that produce tomatoes that differ from the rest of the crop.