Tomatoes

Brian Ascroft, Croftpak Nurseries

British Tomato Week (as it was then) was established in 2004 by The British Tomato Growers’ Association to celebrate all that is glorious about our wonderful British tomatoes. As there’s so much to appreciate about this wonderful fruit, it’s now been extended to a fortnight, that happens each year around the end of May. At Booths, we aim to source all of our fresh tomatoes from the UK from May to mid-November with many of them locally grown and a wide range of varieties available. One of our longest-established tomato partnerships is with local growers Croftpak Nurseries, who have worked with us for over 30 years. Established in Tarleton, Lancashire in 1946 by the Ascroft family, they still proudly run the business today. Current Senior Director Brian Ascroft joined the family business in 1960 after leaving school. The company is now run by his wife Janet and his sons Michael and Peter, and Peter’s wife Katie.

If I go upstairs I can nearly see Booths,

says Brian,

We started with a few hundred plants and the following year we put in 6,000,

he says. As our customers’ tastes changed, Brian started to grow vine-ripened varieties and smaller fruit.

The main thing when sourcing varieties is the flavour. Everything that’s harvested here is harvested by family members – my wife and two sons work with me – and you live or die by what you produce. I’m proud to say that in the over 25 years I’ve been serving Booths I have never had anything returned.

Croftpak first supplied Booths with delicious, fresh tomatoes in the late 1980s. Around the same time, their production changed to long-season tomatoes, meaning they could supply fresh, locally grown tomatoes throughout the summer. The tomato crops are grown in glasshouses heated by renewable energy from a biomass boiler, so they are protected from the cold and can soak up all our British summer sunshine! Hives of bees live inside the glasshouses to pollinate the flowers, with biological control methods used for any unwanted pests that find their way into the crop. Mindful of their carbon footprint, Croftpak have installed solar panels and use electric vehicles. Brian’s father started growing tomatoes in Hesketh Bank after World War II and was suspicious of his son’s innovations.

He died when the first tomato was ripening,

Brian says.

He played hell with me, saying ‘you’ll be growing balls of water,’ but we’ve proved that they’re not balls of water and you get out of something what you put in. People say, ‘how do you get the flavour?’ and I say, ‘if I told you that you’d be as clever as me!’ I do not know but I daren’t change anything. We use biological control and bees to pollinate – spraying is an absolute last resort. And as I’ve said to the lads, ‘if you wouldn’t eat it yourself, don’t put it in the box.’ That’s how we’ve carried on all these years. It’s the way we feel.

Our aim is to try to grow the best-tasting and freshest tomatoes possible. The varieties we grow have been chosen solely due to their flavour, not their yield. We grow them in coir (coconut fibre) slabs, as we can recycle these at the end of the season. Our tomatoes are used in award-winning dishes by Michelin-star chefs, but the majority are sold in Booths! Our motto is ‘Straight from the plant to the plate’, as freshness is the key. We don’t use refrigeration stores so all our produce is freshly picked to order and sent to Booths stores straight away. All the pre-pack lines we send into Booths stores are in cardboard punnets and overwrap, both of which are recyclable.

Top tip: never put your tomatoes in the fridge! Discover some of our delicious ideas to cook with tomatoes by tapping here.