In this extract from his book Big Veg, Twitter sensation Gerald Stratford shares his love of tomatoes and explains how he prepares them for the show bench

We eat tomatoes every day. Can’t get enough of them. If there are any left over that we don’t manage to eat, Liz might make her curry tomato chutney. We’ll also take this opportunity to use our little gadget the dehydrator. After about 12 hours on there, the tomatoes are all dried out. We put them in olive oil and – bingo! – sun-dried tomatoes. We also freeze tomatoes to use in slow cooks during the winter. I usually grow several varieties and only sow a few of each tomato at a time as I want to stretch the season out and have fresh tomatoes for as long as possible.

When it comes to showing, there are so many different classes for tomatoes: standard, plum, cherry, and so many different colours. I’ve done well in the standard class in the past.

With the monster tomatoes weight is everything. They are actually very ugly to look at – they grow in funky shapes, not symmetrical at all. But that doesn’t matter – they are still very tasty to eat. As yet, I haven’t entered a large tomato in a show. I grow them, but right now I’m just curious to see how big the tomato can grow! I was sent some seeds for a large one called ‘Megadom’ this year so fingers crossed!