This year I’m determined to only grow one variety of tomato. This is because my garden was overrun with tomato plants last year and I couldn’t get onto my patio for growing bags and poorly staked cordons. So 2011 will see a more streamlined effort, albeit with slightly fewer tomatoes.

But which which tomato do I choose? There are so many varieties out there, I’m a bit stuck. I’ve not been bowled over by the toms I’ve grown so far: ‘Moneymaker’ lacks flavour, ‘Gartenperle‘ tastes good but the cherry-sized fruits don’t look real to me – I think of them as ‘toy tomatoes’. ‘Maskotka‘, ‘Shirley‘, ‘Minibel‘, ‘Tumbling Tom‘ – they’re all fine, but they don’t excite me. And I’m quite bored of ‘Gardener’s Delight‘. I did enjoy ‘Tigerella‘, which I grew for the first time last year, but the yield wasn’t great. Is there a tomato out there that has it all?

I’ve heard great things about heirloom variety ‘Brandywine‘, and cherry cordon-type ‘Sungold‘, and a quick poll around the office confirmed ‘Sungold’ as a favourite for flavour. ‘Brandywine’ looks great but it doesn’t seem like the sort I’d want to put in a salad. Plum type ‘Roma‘ has had mixed reviews, but I’m tempted to try it as it’s has a semi-bush habit, enabling me to grow it in troughs hung from trellises so it doesn’t clutter up the patio. It has a thick flesh though, making it more suited to sauces than salads, so I’ll need to grow a salad type, too. ‘Ailsa Craig’ and ‘Inca’ were also given the thumbs up, while good old, reliable ‘Gardener’s Delight’ attracted the highest number of votes.

I have a few ‘Losetto’ seedlings on the go, which my partner sowed a couple of weeks ago. It’s a relatively new bush type that promises sweet, juicy flavour and good resistance to blight (we’ll see). I’ve decided we can grow one variety each, without causing too many problems. So I think I’ll pick…