Silver Fir Tomato
Silver Fir Tomato is a Russian variety which produces unique, deeply cut foliage and nearly perfect, 50 to 130 gram red tomatoes. Plants are very compact, reaching around 50 to 60cm tall, and are thus also suited to pot growing. Determinate where a stake is useful to hold the plant up. A valued tomato for reliably producing some early tasty fruits in a cool climate.
2021/22 season. Sown early September, planted outside in early November, ripening began mid January.
Sow – Start on a heat mat ideally in late August to October and plant out after frost risk and soils around 10 deg at night (after 7 days consecutively).
Can start earlier if planting in a hothouse. 8 weeks on average from sowing to planting if using a heat-mat.
Spacing – 50-70cm
- Back to Tomatoes
- How I Grow my tomatoes post
- Tomatoes on the Wiki
- The wild ancestor of the tomato is native to western South America. These wild versions were the size of peas. Aztecs and other peoples in Mesoamerica were the first to have domesticated the fruit and used in their cooking.
- The Spanish first introduced tomatoes to Europe, where they became used in Spanish food.
- In France, Italy and northern Europe, the tomato was initially grown as an ornamental plant. It was regarded with suspicion as a food because botanists recognized it as a nightshade, a relative of the poisonous belladonna.
- This was exacerbated by the interaction of the tomato’s acidic juice with pewter plates.
- The leaves and immature fruit contains tomatine, which in large quantities would be toxic. However, the ripe fruit contains no tomatine.
