A farming couple are playing ketch-up after they harvested more than 12,000 tomatoes from just two plants.
Husband and wife Michael and Joy Michaud of Sea Spring Farm, West Bexington, planted seeds for the tomato plants in March last year and finished harvesting their bumper crop in mid-December.
They grew the Micro Cherry variety of tomato seeds in hanging baskets inside of a polytunnel and the 4ft long branches were laden with the juicy red fruits since July up until the end of last year.
Joy soon began to keep a tally of the tomatoes she picked from the two plants and set a target to collect 1,000 from each of them.
But mild weather resulted in perfect growing conditions and the plants yielded more than 6,000 tomatoes each by mid-December before the colder weather set in.
Joy said the Micro Cherry tomato plant grew much more fruit on it than any other variety of tomato plant she had ever seen.
The couple bought a packet of seeds for their Micro Cherry tomato plants from a wholesaler.
Joy, 63, said: "We aimed to grow 1,000 from each plant but both of them produced more than 6,000 fruit each.
"The plants are big but the fruits are small. They are just beautiful plants which were being grown in hanging baskets and were trailing down, growing masses and masses of fruits. The tomatoes were very good tasting as well.
"We didn't start picking until July time, but by August it was clear that we would very quickly reach our initial target and get a lot more fruit from it than we first thought.
"We then thought 'lets aim for five thousand' and in the end we changed that target again to 6,000."
Joy said that she had harvested a total of 6,017 tomatoes from one plant and 6,043 of tomatoes from another in mid-December before the plant had to be thrown away. She said in more tropical conditions the plants could last for years but that the tomato plants struggle to survive all year in Britain.
Michael and Joy run Sea Spring Seeds, a vegetable seed company based at Sea Spring Farm. The couple's business specialises in chillies, but being tomato lovers, they have also sourced seed of an extensive range of the very best varieties of tomatoes.
The tomato seeds are sold at Sea Spring Seeds and can be found at www.seaspringplants.co.uk
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