Discovering the tomato with a much longer shelf life

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to keep a tomato fresh in its original state for months, rather than making your glut into passata to freeze, or chutney?

But it is possible if you grow storage tomatoes, a type which can keep for months in a cool, dry situation, says Lucy Hutchings, co-founder with Kate Cotterill of Chelsea Gold Medal-winning heirloom seed company She Grows Veg.

“Storage tomatoes are incredibly popular in Italy and southern Europe and they haven’t caught on here, but for our shorter summer season they are perfect,” says Hutchings, who with Cotterill, will once again be creating an exhibit, Fantasy Woodland Feast, at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

What’s the difference?

“Storage tomatoes are slightly genetically different from your conventional tomato and their gene for self-ripening is much weaker.

“So you sow them a month or so later than you would your conventional tomatoes, so by the end of the season their fruit is fully developed but not yet ripe.”

Storage tomatoes tend to be harder than conventional tomatoes, with firmer flesh and firmer skin, she explains.

“Because they ripen really slowly, their sugars develop slowly, so by the time you eat them many varieties are really sweet,” she explains.

“It means that you can either cook with them or have them fresh. Some varieties will be better for cooking and some will be better eaten fresh. It tends to be that the longer they store, the less succulent they are.

“So the longest storing ones, those which store up to a year, are best for cooking. Their skin is tougher, their flesh is firmer and they are usually quite meaty – a lot of flesh rather than a lot of juice.”

Where can you buy them?

You’ll have to sow them from seed – purchasing the seed from specialist seed companies – as you’re unlikely to be able to buy them as plants from garden centres, she notes.

“We’ve been working specifically to bring them to the UK because they are just not known about or grown here, but they are a game-changer for the British gardener.”

She Grows Veg is trialling 50 new different varieties to see what works best. Many are red, but you can also get golden varieties and different shapes, from cherry to plum.

How do you grow them?

Grow them pretty much like regular tomatoes, Hutchings advises.

“Once the fruit is swelling or has swelled, water as little as possible because you want the skins to toughen up, as it helps with the storage time. So water probably less than you would your conventional tomatoes and sow them a bit later. Other than that, they look and grow exactly as a standard indeterminate tomato.”

Storage tomatoes tend to be slightly less susceptible to blossom end rot, a common problem, than regular tomatoes, says Hutchings.

“They are varieties which are developed to be watered less. That’s how they’re traditionally grown in Italy so I think they’ve probably adapted,” she observes.

How do you know when they are ready to harvest?

“You are aiming for them to be roughly full-sized but before they have begun to blush, and if some of the ones on the truss are a bit smaller, that’s fine. It doesn’t matter. They’ll probably ripen up anyway.

“What you want is for most of the tomatoes on that truss to be ripe and you can harvest gradually, so you don’t have to take all the tomatoes off in one go.”

How do you store them?

“Then you can hang them up somewhere cool and dry and ideally out of direct sunlight and they will very slowly ripen through the winter. Different varieties have different speeds at which they ripen, but it means that you can realistically be eating your own home-grown tomatoes all through winter, which is amazing.”

Which varieties should you choose?

“A great starter one is called ‘Hanging Prince’ (medium-sized fruits), which will last for easily three months, if not more. I’ve currently got some that I harvested in August, still very much on the go,” says Hutchings.

Other medium sized storage varieties include ‘Long Keeper’, while the original storage tomato is ‘Piennolo del Vesuvio’, a little plum type, plus ‘Giallorossa di Crispiano’ that will store for at least six months, she says.