We’ve seen some impressive developments in tomato growing for home gardeners in recent years, and while they all came from development for commercial growers some are invaluable for home gardeners. The top two are disease resistance and the revival of grafting as a way to increase vigour and prevent root diseases. The two ideas come together in grafted plants of the cherry tomato ‘Tastyno’.
‘Tastyno’ has a high resistance to tomato mosaic virus and five strains of leaf mould as well as good resistance to three strains of eelworm, and to tomato yellow leaf curl virus. But graft ‘Tastyno’ on to a disease resistant rootstock, just the way that apples are grafted on to rootstocks, and the rootstock provides the roots with resistance to fusarium wilt, verticillium wilt, tomato mosaic virus, crown and root rot, eelworm, and corky root rot.
Of course none of this is any use at all unless the fruits have a good flavour and you get plenty of them. Well, ace veg grower Medwyn Williams, says the round, deep red fruits, up to twenty or sometimes more on each truss, and weighing in at 12-15gm each, have an “exceptional flavour”. They have a great combination of sweetness and sharpness.
It’s the combination of the tasty, prolific and disease resistant variety with the vigorous disease resistant rootstock, which also tolerates a wider range of soil conditions that the varieties own roots, that gives these plants the edge. Shame abouit the silly name.
Editor-in-Chief of the RHS Encyclopedia of Perennials; writer for a wide range of newspapers and magazines including The Garden and The Plantsman; member of the RHS Herbaceous Plant Committee and Floral Trials Committee; author of many books on plants and gardens.
Source: RHS My Garden – Tomato ‘Tastyno’: Plenty of Flavour, Disease Resistant
