This year, I grew rather a lot of tomatoes. So many that I almost lost track. I’ve eaten passata, sundried tomatoes, soups and salads with the lovely fruits. So what did I think of the different varieties that I grew?

Supermarmande – This is a lovely red beefsteak which crops best in greenhouses. I don’t have a greenhouse, so I planted it in the sunniest bit of the garden and hoped for the best. I was duly rewarded with an enormous crop of fat fruits (although they would have been even fatter under glass). I absolutely loved the flavour of this tomato as well: sweet, juicy and rich. It worked beautifully in slices in sandwiches, and roasted for pasta dishes.

Fablonelistnyj – No, I have no idea how to pronounce this heritage tomato’s name, either. But what I do know is that its rather knobbly-shaped little fruits are fantabulous. They are sweet and so very juicy that you’re totally unprepared for the wonderful way they explode in your mouth. This wasn’t the heaviest cropper of all time, and it’s pretty rare, but I loved it.

Cerise – A very good red cherry tomato with a good warm flavour and a nice big crop. I’m normally oddly unenthusiastic about the flavour of many red cherry tomatoes, but this one is a keeper.

Zapotec pleated – What lovely gym-skirt pleats this tomato has! It is best for roasting as it has rather thick, dry flesh which reduces very little in the oven. Again, not the heaviest cropper, but the fruits are fairly mighty.

Hugh’s – this was one of the stars of my veg plot this year. I’ve never grown such enormous beefsteak tomatoes before. In fact, the tomatoes pictured are nothing to some of the hefty beasts that we harvested from one cordon plant. This heritage tomato keeps on giving: I got an enormous crop of enormous fruits. That in itself would not be enough to make me keep growing it, though. So it is a relief that these tomatoes are sweet with thick dry flesh and as such make the most perfect sundried tomatoes I’ve ever had. It wasn’t as great raw, though. If you get the chance to bag this tomato, do grow it, and cook it in as many ways as you can.

White Queen – What a lovely big tomato this is. It has a creamy blush around the stem, which betrays the sweet, slightly creamy taste of the juicy flesh. This was probably one of the lovely tomatoes I ate this summer.

Purple Calabash – I’ll be honest: I was a bit disappointed with this tomato. Though its fruits are utterly delicious: sweet yet smoky, with a lovely wine-y juiciness that makes me scoff as many as I can, they were so very small. This might be because I grew the plant in a large pot rather than in the ground, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and grow it again, just in case. I know size isn’t everything, but I can’t yet recommend this tomato over the larger Purple Cherokee, which I grew last summer, and which has a similarly superb flavour.

Estonian Mini Yellow Cherry – this is a fabulously tart yellow cherry.

Egyptian – I’ve already raved about this tomato, suffice to say that its extraordinary flavour has won it a permanent place in my seed list.

Peremoga – This is a fairly ordinary-looking red tomato which crops very happily and has a warm taste. It is nothing extraordinary, but worth growing and reliable as well.

Sungold – Still one of my favourites. See what I think of it here.