For colourful tomato salads, a mixture of cherry toms in red, orange and yellow looks and tastes superb. Or try thinly sliced white (such as "White Wonder"), green striped ("Green Zebra" and red/orange stripy toms ("Tigerella").

For juicing, you need a prolific, high-yielding but flavourful red variety. Plum tomatoes used for canning are particularly good, so try my favourite, "Roma".

And if you fancy sun-drying your own, go for "Principe Borghese", a bush variety (you can dry them in a very low oven with the door ajar for a few hours if you don't trust the British sun).

Giant tomatoes are the best for stuffing. "Andean Horn" has fruit shaped like Dutch clogs which hold together well without collapsing when cooked. Any of the big beefsteak kinds such as "Big Boy" and "Brandywine" are good for stuffing simply due to their size. But they are also the best to slice in tomato sandwiches because a true beefsteak variety cuts into solid "steaks" with hardly any seeds or juice, so you don't end up with soggy sarnies.

Most gourmet toms do best grown under glass. Outdoors, go for small-fruited tomatoes which ripen earliest and most reliably. If space is in short, supply, an outdoor, compact cascading bushy tom such as "Tumbler", that you can grow in a tub or hanging basket, will score top marks.

Don't rely on finding unusual tomatoes on sale as young plants in garden centres and nurseries - you'll usually have to grow your own from seed or young plantlets. Simpson's Seeds has a particularly good range of both - 01985 845004 - www. simpsonsseeds. co. uk - but you'll need to order fast.