When to plant
tomatoes in the UK
Pinch out side shoots on cordon types. Feed weekly with tomato feed once the first truss sets. Don't overwater — flavour comes from a bit of stress.
Work out your own dates
Starts from the recommended sow date for your area. Sowed on a different day, or planted out late? Adjust below and the harvest moves with it.
Using the UK-average last frost · 15 April · add your postcode to tune it
Growing journey
18 weeks from planting out to harvest · Start indoors 10 weeks before planting out
Get tomatoes seeds
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What tomatoes need
Full sun. Sheltered. Rich soil. Regular feeding once fruiting.
Spacing
45cm between plants
These are larger plants — give them plenty of space for air circulation.
Varieties worth growing
Sungold
★ legendaryThe one everyone comes back to. You pick them warm from the vine in late summer, still smelling faintly of the leaves, and somehow half of them never reach the kitchen. Trusses of little golden-orange fruits, sweet and almost tropical. They split if a shower catches them ripe, but by then you're eating them straight from the plant and you don't mind a bit.
Sungold pasta
Halve a handful, toss with olive oil, torn basil, a pinch of flaky salt. Pile onto hot spaghetti with a splash of pasta water and a grating of parmesan. The tomatoes barely need cooking — just warming through.
Sungold gazpacho
Blitz with a slice of stale bread, a length of cucumber, a little garlic, a splash of sherry vinegar and good olive oil, then serve it cold on the hottest afternoon. Like drinking the summer.
Gardener's Delight
commonA sweet, heavy-cropping cherry tomato, and the one a lot of us grew first. Forgiving, too — it will crop happily through August even when you've slipped away on holiday and left it to the weather. A kind plant to learn on, and a kinder one to come home to.
Slow-roasted cherry tomatoes
Halve them, lay them cut-side up on a tray, drizzle with olive oil and scatter with thyme and a little garlic. An hour at 140°C and they turn soft and jammy and dark at the edges — summer kept in a jar of oil for later.
Moneymaker
commonA steady, medium red tomato that has grown in British greenhouses since the 1930s. The flavour is gentle rather than dazzling, but it crops and crops — happy under glass, and fine outdoors in a kind summer. There's a quiet pleasure in that reliability; the sort of plant a grandparent might have grown.
Tomato sauce
Score and blanch, slip off the skins, then let them down slowly with garlic, olive oil, a pinch of sugar and a few leaves of basil until thick and glossy. The beginning of a hundred suppers; freeze it in batches and you'll have summer to hand all winter.
Black Krim
rareA heritage beefsteak from the Crimean coast, dusky and purple-brown at the shoulders, with a deep, almost smoky sweetness. It ripens best in a warm, sheltered spot, against a sunny wall if you have one. Slice it thick, salt it, and eat it on its own — this is the one that shows people what a tomato can be.
Tomato on toast
Slice it thick onto buttered sourdough, with flaky salt and a crack of pepper, and stop there. A Black Krim asks for nothing else.
San Marzano
uncommonThe plum tomato Naples reaches for, and little else will do. Meaty and low on seeds, with a balance that grows richer in the cooking. It wants the warmest, sunniest spot you can give it here — and in a good summer it earns that spot many times over.
Pizza sauce
Crush them by hand — a blender makes them too smooth — with a drizzle of olive oil, a pinch of salt and a torn basil leaf. No cooking. The tomato does the work, the way it's done in Naples.
Tomatoesdrink heavily through summer — a good soak at the roots beats a daily sprinkle. How I water, and the lance I use →
When to sow tomatoes
Based on UK average frost date. Enter your postcode for exact dates, or find your city.
Where to buy tomatoes seeds
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What you'll need for tomatoes
The stuff beginners wish they'd bought sooner.
Reusable, no tying needed — just wind the stem as it grows. Much easier than canes and string once you've tried them.
High-potash liquid feed. Once the first fruits form, feed weekly — it makes a real difference to yield.
If using canes instead of spirals. Beginners use string that cuts into stems — soft ties or figure-8 clips are kinder.
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Get your exact dates
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