Sunshine fruit: the Isle of Wight’s incredible tomatoes

Walking around the glasshouses, it’s clear that every single element of tomato growing has been painstakingly reviewed and improved to become the best it can be. Different types of glass are used in different types of glasshouses to benefit different types of tomatoes. An AI system reads the amount of sunlight multiple times a second and adjusts other variables accordingly. CO2 is pumped into the glasshouses and humidity is controlled. The Tomato Stall is even experimenting with special LED lights developed by Philips to see how they can benefit the fruits. But despite all these cutting-edge methods, the business is actually incredibly sustainable, and relies on nature just as much as technology to produce the best tomatoes it can.

‘We’re the biggest grower of organic tomatoes in the UK and around thirty percent of our tomatoes are organic, but the only difference between our organic and non-organic crop is that our non-organic tomatoes are grown in coconut husks rather than soil,’ says Paul. ‘That means we can’t use pesticides, so we turn to natural solutions instead. Our glasshouses contain their own little ecosystems, with bees pollinating the plants and natural predators eating all the mites and flies which could destroy the tomatoes. Someone walks round every glasshouse each week to make sure the ecosystem is perfectly balanced, introducing new bugs as and when they’re needed.’

This dedication to sustainability and organic production means The Tomato Stall has created an almost entirely closed system, as everything can be composted at the end of each harvest – including the string used to hold up the plants. ‘We use that compost on the soil to introduce more nutrition every year. It’s such a successful system that we’ve never had to have a year’s break to allow the soil to recover.’

While sustainability is obviously very important, since about 2005 The Tomato Stall’s main focus has been on developing different varieties of tomatoes. ‘If you go back 100 years to Victorian times, gardens would contain thirty or forty types of tomatoes, but then World War Two happened and it was all about rationing, yields and standardisation, so everyone started growing the boring salad tomato,’ says Paul. ‘It happened across the board – carrots suddenly became big and orange and cheesemakers focused solely on ‘Government Cheddar’ – but now we’re rediscovering and demanding more unusual, unique varieties. Some of our tomatoes have been developed over twenty years, and now we’ve got some that taste like apricots or gooseberries. It’s a really exciting time as people are appreciating simpler cooking with the best ingredients. If you want to make a tomato and mozzarella salad, you need the best tomatoes, the best cheese and some fantastic oil. If you can get your hands on them, then that salad will taste better than anything more complicated made with poorer quality ingredients.’

The final piece of the puzzle that makes Isle of Wight Tomatoes so good is their location. While any tomato grower could utilise the latest technology and make the most of natural, sustainable methods to improve their tomatoes, they wouldn’t be able to match The Tomato Stall’s fruits. That’s because they either wouldn’t get enough sun in the UK, or because they would need to be transported for miles if coming from a sunnier country like Spain or Italy.