Growing full size tomatoes in the open

strandroad

I have an excellent corner in the garden, very sunny and sheltered, it has very reliably produced lovely cherry tomatoes for the last couple of years. I just grow them in the open on supports. I am now tempted to try larger heirloom varieties (Black Krim etc) but I'm not sure if they have a chance to succeed in our climate without any growhouse protection. I wouldn't like to waste the space I could use for my reliable cherry varieties.
Any thoughts?

Harry Palmr

Dunno if the larger varieties are more difficult to grow but if you're game you could make a tomato teepee using six beanpoles and some translucent plastic. I did this last summer (with a very late start) and it worked well.

macraignil

Larger tomato varieties do take longer to get ripe from what I have seen but I have got some medium sized ones to mature outdoors a few years back. I'd say some of the really big ones like the beefsteak variety would be very unlikely to get ripe in our average summer. Maybe you could continue to grow a few cherry tomato plants in case the summer is a bit short for the experimental variety you want to try.

ike

I grew Roma (Plum) tomatoes successfully last year outdoors but in containers, mind you the hot summer really did help

rolion

I grew 4 types of tomatoes last year.
Some of them in the greenhouse,some of them outside from same seeds.

The ones inside went nice lovely huge but a bit maybe not so juicy compared with the ones outside.
The outsiders grew slower and less quantity fruit vs flower per plant, but better taste overall.