Choosing your cultivars

Start with the big beefsteak heirlooms if you want slicing tomatoes with presence. Brandywine (pink, ribbed, 300–500g fruit) is the benchmark — sweet, low-acid, prone to cracking but worth it. Costoluto Fiorentino is the Italian ribbed heirloom, more compact, earlier, with a balance of sugar and acidity that works raw or cooked. Black Krim offers dusky, smoky flavour and does better in cooler summers than most. Ananas Noire (pineapple tomato) is large, striped green-and-red, tropical-sweet, spectacular on a plate.

For paste tomatoes, San Marzano Lungo is the gold standard — 10–12cm long, thick-walled, perfect for passata. San Marzano Lampadina is bulbous, earlier by two weeks, easier in a British summer. Roma VF is the reliable workhorse — determinate (bushy, not vining), heavy yield, fewer disease issues. Datterino is the small paste type, 20–30g, intensely sweet, prolific, excellent for roasting whole.

Green Zebra is the oddball worth including: a medium heirloom that stays green-striped when ripe, tart and zingy, good for salsa verde or slicing into salads for colour. It fruits reliably even in average summers. For something earlier and smaller, try Marvel Striped (also called Tigerella) — red with orange stripes, tangy, ready in 65 days from transplant, nearly foolproof.