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Perfect for gardening enthusiasts at any level, this podcast is your companion to cultivating success and beauty in your own backyard or flower patch. Hosted by Jane Westoby from Fuchsia Blooms Florist and The Hampshire Seed Company.
Each episode is a treasure trove of practical tips, expert advice, and insider flower farming guides designed to help you sow and grow with confidence and harvest with pride. Whether you’re dreaming of rows of neat vegetables or cutting flowers for bouquets all year round, we’ll walk you through every step.
Let’s grow together!
Jane Westoby (00:03)
Hey there flower friends and welcome back to the podcast that believes that flowers should be local, seasonal and grown with love, not wrapped in plastic and grown halfway around the world. I'm Jane, the founder of the Hampshire Seed Company and today I'm not talking flowers, which is my usual get up and go. Today I'm talking all things tomatoes with Lance from Tomato Revolution.
and his insights into tomato growing are just fantastic. I was really excited to chat to Lance, chat all things tomatoes, growing and feed. So if you are a tomato grower or want to be tomato grower, then this episode is a really, really special treat.
Jane Westoby (00:48)
So hello Lance, I'm really excited about our chat today all about tomatoes and tomato growing. It's a subject I'm really excited about and I know you are really, really passionate about. Do you want to introduce yourself?
Lance (01:04)
Yeah, my name's Lance Turner. I am from Tomato Revolution. We're a small little company in Wiltshire. And I've been growing tomatoes for about 20 years. And I'm just pretty obsessed with them, basically.
Jane Westoby (01:15)
Yeah, I think you are. I think you're probably the most obsessed person I've seen with tomatoes, I think.
Lance (01:21)
Well, think, think, I don't know about that, but I think that there's plenty of tomato obsessives out there, you know, there's daily obsessives and flower obsessives like yourself, but tomatoes are just something that you can't replicate. Well, the supermarkets can't replicate that flavor. So I think there's a passion, certainly for growing, a hobby grower to grow tomatoes.
Jane Westoby (01:42)
Yeah okay and I am yeah I must confess yeah I am a bit of a daily obsessive yeah absolutely. So have you started your tomato seeds off yet? Tell me what's going on now at Tomato Revolution, what have you done?
Lance (01:57)
Okay, I always start sowing on the 14th of February every year. It's just out of habit. is quite... I don't think my wife appreciates it actually. She's like, well, what we doing on Valentine's Day? Well, I'm sowing tomato seeds. yeah, so it's just, it is quite early, but I do like to get ahead and I wouldn't recommend everyone starts.
Jane Westoby (02:01)
Well that's romantic!
Lance (02:17)
so early but we'll get I'll move on to that afterwards but um yes 14th of February I sew I've just sown about 140 varieties and I do about about 10 plants of each variety so we'd have a starting point of 1400 um and they're just popping their heads up it's we're a week in um interestingly I noticed that some pots have not
Jane Westoby (02:39)
Wow.
Lance (02:47)
have not germinated yet and they're all the varieties that I haven't sown for three or four years where the seeds older and it just takes longer to germinate. So if you've got old seed and it germinates slower that's quite normal.
Jane Westoby (02:56)
Yeah.
Yeah, okay, well that's good to know actually because a lot of people do keep their seed for a number of years.
Lance (03:06)
Yes, and tomato seed, it totally depends on the variety, but some varieties I've had really good germination after five or six years. It's just the odd variety, slow down at three years, but most tomato seeds will in their fourth year probably give you 60 % germination. So keep your seeds, don't throw them away.
Jane Westoby (03:25)
Yeah, well we never, yeah, I never throw seed away. It's always worth a try, isn't it? Always worth a try if you've got old seed. You're not gonna lose anything.
Lance (03:34)
No, you're not gonna lose anything. yeah, so they're a week in. I have them on heat mats. Unfortunately, we've got this sort of large outbuilding stroke shed, is not, you know, it is cold in there, unfortunately. I would have them in our house, but don't think that's been allowed. If you can grow them indoors at room,
Jane Westoby (03:39)
And where are they? Where have you got them? Okay.
Lance (03:58)
at room temperature, then I would say that is the best way, certainly because once tomato seeds need three weeks under heat in my view and grow lights, once you get to three weeks and every seed is germinated, the preference is to take the seedlings completely off of heat and they're quite happy at five degrees and above centigrade. So if you are growing indoors,
Once your three weeks are up on the heat mat, take the heat mat off completely and just have the grow lights on 12 hours a day. That will stop your seedlings becoming leggy. They'll be slower growing, slightly shorter and produce better roots and a much sturdier plant. Too many people leave the seedlings on heat for too many weeks. And I would also, if you are going to pop the seedlings on, I'd wait three or four weeks.
from when you've sown them so that they're sturdy and they pot on better and they have a better root system.
Jane Westoby (04:48)
bit bigger. Yeah, okay, that's really good. Actually, mine are inside. are on my windowsills with some extra lights along the windowsills. We've got a lot of windows here, so I can fill them up pretty, pretty quickly though. Yeah, I have run out of room.
Lance (05:07)
But that's, as I say, once they've germinated, I wouldn't have them on any heat whatsoever. Just plenty of light. Have the compost damp and not soaking. Window seal is good as long as you... Yeah, I still consider grow lights though, because as we all know, you...
Jane Westoby (05:15)
So window sills good. Window sills are good for home growers.
Lance (05:25)
you put something on the window sill to grow and it leans towards the sun and then you have to turn it around the next day to lean it back. So LED grow lights are very cheap to run and I would recommend buying the best you can afford.
Jane Westoby (05:38)
Yeah, they're quite cheap to buy. You can get long ones, you can get round ones, so whatever kind of shape and size fits your windowsill or growing area, you can buy them quite cheap.
Lance (05:49)
Yes,
and they're not expensive and they don't give off any heat. I've just actually, I've always used fluorescent tubes, the old sort of T5 type ones and this year I've got hold of some LEDs instead and then they're much better because the light is more consistent across a space whereas the fluorescent tubes are much more expensive to run.
Jane Westoby (06:06)
Yeah, okay.
Okay, so if someone has, let's say, never grown tomatoes before, what would you say kind of the biggest mistake is that people make when they start off growing tomatoes?
Lance (06:23)
Certainly you need heat and light to start with. And some people have trouble with germination because they don't put enough heat and light in initially to the seedlings. They plant outdoors too early and obviously you have risk of frost.
They don't side shoot the plants. These are the kind of mistakes that I generally see. If you're a beginner, I would start maybe with micro dwarf tomatoes. You could grow in little two litre pots. Because they don't need any staking or supporting. that's, and if you are living in a flat in London and you've got a balcony, you can grow tomatoes. And I think that that is a you know, just treat them like a house plant and then.
Jane Westoby (06:48)
Good tip.
Lance (06:59)
If they're still fruiting at the end of the summer, can bring them indoors and have them on the window ledge and they should go right the way. Carry on. So, yeah, I definitely, definitely recommend micro dwarf tomatoes for a beginner.
Jane Westoby (07:03)
and carry on.
Okay, that's really good as well. And I think one thing that I see is people starting their seeds way, way too early. I if you're an expert grower and you've got the heat and you've got the light, I I start mine in January and that's just because we have so many different things that we have to grow that I start mine really, really early because then I need to get the next things on the heat mats, et cetera. And if you're an expert grower,
Lance (07:18)
Yes.
Jane Westoby (07:36)
That's fine to do if you've got experience, but I'd say if someone's a beginner, just leave it a little bit later. And if you haven't got grow lights, just leave it a little bit later and then you don't need all of that.
Lance (07:44)
Yes, the
No, I agree completely. So it is a juggling act. mean, even for someone like myself who's been growing for years, you've got to look at an eight week cycle basically. So when you sow your seeds, eight weeks later, those tomato plants will be 12 inches tall and they're going to start to need some kind of support. And the 12 inches tall from the middle of February to the middle of April, then you've got to, I've got to think personally, middle of April in a polytunnel, know, frosty night coming.
I may have to put a heater on in the tunnel on the odd night. And I'm all over them. I'm monitoring them like children almost. So you have to look at the eight week cycle. So if you are in the North of England, for instance, and you want to grow your tomatoes outdoors on your allotment, you've got to think about when the last risk of frost is, say late May. So you should be growing late March, early April.
Jane Westoby (08:17)
you
Yeah.
Lance (08:41)
So you, or if you're growing in a greenhouse, you can go a little bit earlier. If you're in the north of England, you go a bit later. If you're in the south of England, you go a bit earlier. So it's the, it's eight weeks. That's what you've got to think about. I need to sow eight weeks before I'm going to put that tomato plant in the ground or in a raised bed or whatever, or grow bag or whatever method you like.
Jane Westoby (09:01)
Yeah, timing is everything, isn't it? And adjusting everything to your conditions and what you actually have, whether you have a greenhouse or don't have a greenhouse and then where you're located. I think that is really, really important, isn't it, Hay?
Lance (09:15)
Yes, so mean if you've got an allotment and you want to plant your tomato plants outdoors and you sow in February and you need to plant them out saying mid to late May in your allotment they are going to be 18 inches tall and need support and also what you've to remember is that if you've got them even in a one litre pot the tomato plants are going to run out of nutrients and they'll lose their green colour and they'll go yellow and you have to feed them so
There's all kinds of parameters that you need to think about. So it's not a race. You're not going to be left behind if you grow. I'd be fine if I grew mine in late March. I'd just be a little bit behind, but it doesn't make a lot of difference.
Jane Westoby (09:53)
Yeah,
So what do you think really matters in the first, let's say the first four weeks of growing? What are the most important things for growers to make sure they keep on top of in those first four weeks?
Lance (10:08)
Okay, so the first thing is, and I had this problem and this mistake is, buy a compost that is quite low in nutrients for sowing seeds and maybe potting on at the beginning. I had one a few years ago that was too strong and too rich and it stifled the tomato plants and they were a very dark green and it stunted them and I had to re-sow them all. And at the same time, don't buy cheap.
Jane Westoby (10:30)
wow.
Lance (10:32)
supermarket compost, that's fool's gold. Find a a gentle compost, not something like John Innes number one seed compost, because that is, I find too heavy and too sandy. You want quite a light fluffy compost. As I say, that's moderate in nutrients. Once tomatoes get older though, they are, you know, they are very hungry for nutrients. So it's just at the beginning. And when you pop them on, say at three weeks,
Jane Westoby (10:33)
Mmm.
Lance (10:56)
old you want to try and bury half the stem into in the pot and any bit of stem that you do bury will produce roots and that will make it a in effect a shorter plant initially that is going to produce fruit lower on the truss and will have a stronger root system.
Jane Westoby (11:10)
Okay, so you're taking that stem and you're just burying it deeper in the pot.
Lance (11:15)
If that is suddenly say five inches tall, say six inches tall, I would bury three inches of it into the new pot that you're putting it onto.
because the bit that you're burying will produce roots and they'll become less leggy and you won't have to support them and there'll be stronger plants. And also they'll produce a truss lower down on the plant. So if you're in a greenhouse, in a raised bed, when you go to pop that on in the final position, you do the same thing again. So if it's 16 inches tall, you try and bury eight inches.
and then the first truss of tomatoes will become lower on the plant and then you'll get more trusses on the tomato plant before it reaches the roof of the greenhouse. So you get more for your money.
Jane Westoby (11:55)
Yeah, okay.
So, yeah. So you don't have that kind of empty space at the bottom? Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I bury mine a little bit, but I've never buried them quite that deep. So I think I might try that this year. That's great.
Lance (12:03)
That's right, yeah. Yeah.
Obviously when you bury you need to chop the branches off the bit that you do bury so you understand what I mean. You've got to those bottom leaves out.
Jane Westoby (12:17)
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, you've just mentioned a little bit about compost and nutrients and that kind of thing. So maybe if we just talk about pests and diseases, because there's one thing in particular, which is...
the dreaded blight that we all dread coming along every year. And it's one reason why I actually don't grow any outdoor tomatoes because whenever I've tried, they've always got blight and I just get so disheartened with it. So I just don't bother anymore. I just put them all in a greenhouse. But what are your top tips for avoiding pests and diseases and probably blight in particular?
Lance (13:05)
Okay, well, is an airborne.
virus that it basically what it does it comes in on the molecules come in on wet warm air and that's they thrive on that and travel. So some years you can go outdoors it's a bit of a lottery last year was excellent everyone had a great year little blight outside two years before that blight you know sweat through Europe and everyone I was speaking to people in France and Spain even they were having it.
There are some blight resistant varieties on the market, but I'm skeptical of those. I certainly think that they've got limited ability to protect against blight. My best recommendation is to buy early ripening varieties because blight tends to come at the back end of the summer and try and get them ready to plant outdoors as early as possible. Well, get them as big as possible. So say the last frost date is mid-May.
Jane Westoby (13:45)
you
Lance (13:55)
If you have an indoor space and you can get them to 12, 14, 16 inches and plant them out, they're quite established and you are going to get fruit before blight may arrive in August, for instance. avoid potato leaf varieties. The gene of potato leaf varieties is recessive and has a lower disease resistance. So regular leaf varieties are best.
and avoid late ripening varieties. So you really want to be looking at early ripening varieties would be my best call. Polytunnels and greenhouses get it a lot less, but it does happen. And the main factor of that is ventilation. So we used to get the odd bit of blight in our tunnel, our main tunnel. Last year we put some side vents in and we had not even a whisper of blight. So another factor is ⁓ white fly carry blight.
Jane Westoby (14:39)
that's
Lance (14:42)
So ⁓ you need to protect against white fly. And we buy these little cards that have parasitic wasps larvae that go into it. It's a natural, you know, there's no chemicals. So we buy these little cards and hook them onto the tomato plants so that they will keep the white fly down.
Jane Westoby (14:43)
Okay.
Yeah.
Lance (15:01)
Hope that will make sense.
Jane Westoby (15:03)
Yeah, it does. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So they're probably the biggest, I'd say the biggest pest and disease problems that certainly that I've seen.
Lance (15:13)
Yeah, and it's devastating and what it does, it puts gardeners off from growing outdoors. And I'd hate to put anybody off from trying it, but you just need to be prepared as an outdoor grower to have a bad year. And it happens, you know, but you, you know, last year everyone was raving because they were so excited that they got brilliant crops outdoors. ⁓
Jane Westoby (15:20)
Yeah.
Yeah.
I didn't have any outdoors last
year because I'd stopped doing it. Stopped putting them outside.
Lance (15:38)
Exactly, but it is a big talking point
Jane Westoby (15:40)
for my outdoor ones this year.
Lance (15:41)
Definitely don't prune your tomatoes when there is upcoming wet and humid weather because the blight spores tend to really want to go into those open wounds. So if there's a dry spell upcoming, that's when you would do side shooting and pruning. If you overly prune, you're going to have too many wounds.
Jane Westoby (15:52)
Okay.
Lance (15:59)
And another thing is liquid seaweed is pretty good to spray onto those wounds because it acts as kind of a medicine.
Jane Westoby (16:05)
Okay.
Lance (16:06)
So these are all natural processes basically.
So you can save seed from plants that have got blight. That's not affected. And you can put blight disease plants on your compost. So that's a myth that you can't. So that's perfectly fine.
Jane Westoby (16:11)
Okay.
I see, yeah, I never have done, I've never
composted them. Okay. Interesting, very interesting.
Lance (16:23)
But if you do, if you.
But if you do have a blight plant, you do need to remove it from the others, basically. If you've got a greenhouse, yeah, just take it out, wear gloves, be sure to wash the scissors or whatever it is you've used, disinfect them afterwards because it's quite contagious.
Jane Westoby (16:30)
to stop it infecting the rest of them.
Yeah, okay.
So, what I also see quite a lot is plants which have a lot of leafy growth, green leafy growth, but they don't have a lot of fruit on them or you you'll have a truss and it's like, the truss is there but there's just no fruit on it. It's like an empty truss.
Lance (17:05)
Yeah, that's pretty easy. ⁓
Jane Westoby (17:06)
There's probably maybe two problems there,
but let's... Yeah.
Lance (17:09)
So the main problem there is there's too much nitrogen in the feed. things like seaweed, things that are homemade, nettles, too much manure in your mix in a raised base. People love to put manure and manure is great, but the nitrogen levels are so strong that the fruit struggle to form correctly because there's, as I say, too much nitrogen, not enough phosphorus and potassium.
So what we tend to do, and everyone's different, but I have an equal mix of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium at the beginning of the year. I may have more, slightly more nitrogen. And then as soon as I get flowers, I go down to 40 % nitrogen and then the rest is made up of potassium and phosphorus. So.
Jane Westoby (17:50)
So what feed do you use? What would you recommend?
Lance (17:53)
Well, I use a liquid feed. So basically I have a watering system, which is gravity fed, 15 litre pots. They're all in little trays and at the bottom of the pot, there's like a one and a half centimetres of water and a little valve. And then when the plants drink that water, the valve opens and it replaces it. So the tomato plants drink exactly what they need. And I put the nutrients, liquid nutrients in the tank.
and I use a liquid feed called Mills, which is also used worldwide in the cannabis industry, strangely enough, but it's very precise. And also, in addition to the feed, I add some pH down, which is to reduce the hardness of the water, because tomatoes like it sort of below 6 pH.
Jane Westoby (18:28)
Nice.
Lance (18:43)
So if you're in a hard water area, something to bear in mind. Yeah, I use a liquid feed, but there's loads of feeds out there. And you can buy what I buy, the stuff I use in little one liter bottles. It's basically an A and a B mix. And the A is mainly nitrogen and the B is phosphorus and potassium. So I just alternate those.
Jane Westoby (19:00)
so you can mix it in the ratio that you
need.
Lance (19:02)
Yes, but you can buy products that are you can buy products out there that are you know nitrogen heavy and it's all about the NP what they call the NPK which is on the back of a on the back of a bottle so N is your nitrogen your P and your K are phosphorus and potassium if the N is higher than the other two then you don't really want to be doing as you get flowers on your plant you really don't want to be on that feed you want to find something that's
Jane Westoby (19:03)
that's perfect.
Lance (19:28)
got a higher number of the potassium and phosphorus. And that will, you will get bigger fruits because of that and it will encourage fruit growth and flower growth. Yeah, so.
Jane Westoby (19:36)
And you can see that on all liquid
feeds actually, if you actually go to the garden center and you turn the packets round, you can see those NPK ratios on all of the feeds actually. So it's pretty simple to then work out which ones you need. You don't have to guess necessarily.
Lance (19:50)
Yeah,
exactly. But they won't make such a huge difference. The thing that makes a big difference is manure and things like comfrey and nettles. They are really high in nitrogen. And whilst they're homemade and they're cost effective, heavy use of those and too much nitrogen will just give you loads of growth and no fruit. So it's...
Jane Westoby (20:13)
Yeah. Which is not what we want.
We want lots and lots of fruit.
Lance (20:16)
No.
Yeah, if you've got lots of manure or you've been using nettles, once you see the first flowers, I'd go right back on those types of feeds and then use a sort of a more balanced feed.
Jane Westoby (20:26)
Yeah, after that. Perfect, okay. So what about trusses that just don't set?
but there's just nothing on it.
Lance (20:33)
So certainly with tomatoes they are self pollinating and the pollen will fall down from one to another. Certainly a lot of people are aware of this. If you give the truss a little shake regularly when you go past it, that will transfer the pollen between the different flowers on the truss and that will really help.
Another issue you get, which you can't stop, is when it gets very, very hot in the summer in a greenhouse or a tunnel, it gets so hot the pollen becomes sticky. And it's almost impossible to pollinate that truss. And what you'll find is you'll get flower drop, you'll get one truss that all the flowers drop and you think, what's going on here? And that normally is an extreme weather change where, you know, we get 30 degrees one day and the pollen...
pollen's got no way of transferring between the flowers. yeah, shake the trusses. Yeah, basically, give them a little shake when you walk past each plant, yeah.
Jane Westoby (21:24)
which will help. I
tend to put a shade cloth over the top of my greenhouse as well, literally a blanket on really hot days. I'll put a blanket over the top around midday ⁓ just to stop the heat from it getting so hot inside my greenhouse. And I found that actually does help to just lower that temperature a little bit, you know, in a really hot summer.
Lance (21:36)
Okay.
Yeah, or you could, if you know there's some really hot weather coming, really go around every plant and give them a good shake before that hot weather comes and that should, you know, there's loads of little quirks, but yeah, I do get a lot of messages saying, all the flowers have fallen off. And sometimes as well, the flower, what you get with some beefsteak varieties is you get such a wonderful big truss of tomatoes on the first truss.
Jane Westoby (21:55)
beforehand. Yeah.
Lance (22:12)
including what they call a mega bloom, which is like a great big ugly first tomato. And the plant is self-regulating and it's putting so much energy into what it's got there, this wonderful truss of tomatoes, that it can't cope with the next truss. So it just drops the flowers. So a tomato plant is very self-regulating. So if you've got a brilliant cluster of tomatoes and the next truss drops its flowers, you know, don't worry.
Jane Westoby (22:31)
Yeah.
Yeah, they'll come back. You'll get more.
Lance (22:38)
Yeah, it's just doing its own thing. They really know what they're doing, tomatoes.
Jane Westoby (22:39)
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, Mother Nature. Mother Nature at best, I think.
Lance (22:46)
Yes,
exactly.
Jane Westoby (22:47)
So tell me about your favourite tomato varieties then. What do you love growing and which are your favourites?
Lance (22:56)
Well, people buy with their eyes and they see a pretty color and a pretty shape and some bits of black on it and stripes and all kinds. They often don't taste as good. a lot of my favorite tomatoes are pretty nondescript looking. They might be just plain yellow or green or red. But I am obsessed with flavor as a priority. As a home gardener, I think you need to be.
And you're not looking to grow mountains of tomatoes. You just want tomatoes that can't be replicated, that are just the best you've ever tasted. favourite varieties. Brandywine Sud of Strain, is, ⁓ little is known about it, but it's from the sort of, sort of from the 1930s. That's sort of a big pink beef steak that's wonderfully flavoured. Another one called Green Giant, which is low yielding.
splits easily, hardly changes from green to bright green. No, it's got nothing going for it. But when you eat it, it's like, wow, it's unbelievable. and you look at it and think, well, that's not gonna be very nice. It's green. And green tomatoes are generally not that popular. So that's up there in my top three. Brandywine Southern Strains definitely. There's a dwarf variety called Rosella Purple, which I adore.
Jane Westoby (23:43)
You're not selling it to me!
Lance (24:04)
and the flavor just sings in your mouth for like two minutes afterwards. There's a recent one that's come out in the last five years called Captain Lucky, is tricolored, well bicolored, you know, cut it open, it's different colors. Often they can be very mild, and this is quite the opposite. This is a brilliant tomato. there's loads, it's like asking me to choose my favorite child.
Jane Westoby (24:12)
Ooh.
Yeah, I need to look that one up.
Okay.
So is flavor genetically dominant then when you're breeding them?
Lance (24:35)
⁓ Well, you can breed the best two-flavoured tomatoes you know of. It's not necessary that the offspring are going to have that same quality of flavour. You can sometimes have a disappointment. It's a bit like breeding horses. You breed a fast horse with another fast one. The chances are it's going to be very fast, but not necessarily. A lot of the old heirloom varieties...
Jane Westoby (24:51)
Hmm, but not necessarily. ⁓ okay.
Lance (24:58)
were for have been forgotten and lost. They have flavor, but they had other things that weren't going for them commercially, like they split easily. The yield is low or the disease resistance is not very good. that, you know, commercial tomatoes are grown for uniformity, yield, storage, etc, etc. it's a bit of they're grown for cash. Yeah. So it is a trade off.
Jane Westoby (25:16)
Yeah, they're grown for cash.
Yes,
you do and I know that you do breed your own as well.
Lance (25:28)
Yes, I've just kind of started that. I started about six years ago and released my first one in 2025. It took six years to stabilise and I've got three more this year, hopefully, that will be stable. I've got a few people trialling them for me so that the more you can grow of a project variety,
the quicker you can find out your stability. So if everyone comes back, or say 10 people, tells me it's green and black, then it's stable. So it takes between four and 10 years really to stabilize a tomato variety. Depends on their genetics and how much they've been crossed and bred before.
Jane Westoby (26:04)
It's a long project.
Lance (26:06)
I think what you're looking for is a combination of disease resistance, yield and taste. And taste is the first one. You can sort of get three years down the line with one and they're pink, they're all pink and then you get to year four and then a yellow one turns up. But I think what happens is you take the pollen from one tomato plant to another or you basically brush the two flowers together.
I always use a potato leaf variety as the female and I brush a flower from a regular leaf variety onto a potato leaf variety and I save the tomato and the seeds from that potato leaf variety and immediately grow some, even if it's September, just to check the shape of the leaves.
If the leaves are regular leaf, I know the cross is taken because potato leaf varieties are recessive and regular leaf is dominant. And then what I do is the following year I grow one plant only and that is an F1 and it will look nothing like each parent. And then it's the following year is the interesting bit. That's when the F2 is. So I grow as many plants as I can, say six.
and they will not all be the same. know, one might come out pink, one might be yellow, one might be chocolate, and I choose the one, the family tree that I like best. So if the one that tastes best, best yield, mainly tastes great, and I will run with that family tree. You could run with more family trees. You could run with a yellow one and let's say a chocolate one, but I tend to run with just one. And then the following year you grow six more.
Jane Westoby (27:12)
Thank
Lance (27:37)
⁓ and then you look at the differences and then you make a selection, the one you like, and you save seed from that and you go on and on and on until you have stability. the older heirloom varieties are better to work with because their gene pool is smaller, but if you take some modern varieties and I've been crossing Black Beauty with other varieties last year as F1s this year and Black Beauty is already a cross of
pink broccoli tie-dye and indigo rose. So there's quite a big gene pool. It could take me a long time to get them back. it's a lot of fun and you just, there's stuff that comes out. You think, did that, how did that happen? the, you cross a large tomato with a smaller tomato, the smaller tomato is dominant. So if you do a beef steak and a small salad, the offspring will nearly always be small salad.
Jane Westoby (28:23)
Okay, so you've got the dominant and recessive genes. So I'm thinking about dahlias here and all the dominant and recessive genes in dahlias and you've kind of got a similar thing going on with the tomatoes as well.
Lance (28:25)
Sorry, babe.
I think so. I don't know much about dahlias, if you use, I don't know how it works, but yeah, you could work on recessive and dominant. If you put recessives together, you can get some really interesting results. So, variegated leaves are quite rare in tomatoes and recessive and potato leaf. So I've got a potato leaf variety that is variegated, for instance. I didn't create it, but it's fascinating.
Jane Westoby (28:56)
That's exciting. I've not seen one of those before. I'll be looking that up as well.
Lance (29:01)
You know, people are divided on it. Some people think that variegated tomato plants look a bit odd or diseased or weird. Other people love the novelty of them.
Jane Westoby (29:10)
bit odd. Okay.
Well, I'll definitely be looking that up. Right. Okay. So I think we're probably almost done for
Such an exciting conversation. getting to talk flowers and plants is always, well, for me anyway, always so exciting. And that's why I love going to shows, because I always love talking about plants and flowers and doing the podcast, which is always fantastic. So, me, how many tomatoes have you got on the go at the moment?
Lance (29:20)
And then, yeah.
140 varieties. ⁓ I would do more, but I've only got a certain amount of space. I've got sort of 54 foot by 14 foot as the main tunnel. I've got another tunnel up, another 30 foot tunnel up in Sirencester and a couple of smaller tunnels here. If I had more space, we'd have more varieties. yeah, you can never grow enough, can you?
Jane Westoby (29:40)
140 varieties. Wow.
base.
That'd be more.
Need to
work on that. No, yeah, I know. Yeah, I can never grow enough dahlias. I'll be honest. I'll just be honest that there's not enough room in the world for me to grow the number of dahlias I to grow. Well, thank you so much for today. It's been enlightening. And yeah, I've learned a lot. I mean, I've grown tomatoes for years and years, but you always learn something new when you talk to a new grower, which is always really exciting. And I hope everyone out there is going to try their hand at.
Lance (30:04)
You know, you're the same.
It's an absolute pleasure.
Jane Westoby (30:30)
tomatoes if they are not growing them already and use some of your tips. Thank you so much!
Lance (30:32)
Me too. Well, it's been great to speak to you.
Thanks for having me.