Tomato Alicante

The Spanish-origin heritage tomato that has been a British favourite for over half a century, largely because it crops when other varieties sulk. Alicante sets fruit reliably in a cool summer, ripens evenly, and resists splitting after heavy rain — none of which sounds exciting until you have lost a crop to a wet August.

The fruits are medium salad tomatoes of 75 to 100 grams, glossy red with firm flesh and small seed cavities. The flavour is well balanced: sweet, but with the acid backbone that stops it tasting flat, which is where a lot of modern varieties fall down.

It is open pollinated, so seed from your best fruits comes true the following year. A cordon, so it wants sideshooting weekly, tying in as it climbs, and stopping in late August so the last trusses actually ripen.