Tomatoes

Science - How Tomatoes Lost Their Taste

Turns out these green shoulders are a result of the same gene that controls the amount of sugar present in ripe fruits. When farmers selected for a mutation that produced uniformly red tomatoes, they sacrificed flavor.

[Image description: a hand holding a glass bowl stuffed with red plum and cherry tomatoes. Most of the plum tomatoes have splashes of green on their tops and shoulders.]

I'm looking to compile a list of places to buy tomato seeds. Let me know if you've got something to add, particularly for sellers outside of the US!

Places I've purchased from:

• Baker Creek
  • Probably my favorite. I'm a sucker for free shipping and free seed samples, they've got a great review section with photos and their catalogue is just eye candy for browsing. However, some people have disavowed them due to their inviting Cliven Bundy to speak back in 2019.
• Johnny's Selected Seeds
  • Good germination, and has options for disease-resistant varieties, but on the expensive side if you're not buying in bulk, and the shipping is pricy too.
• San Diego Seed Company
  • I like to support local growers to me, they say their seeds are better adapted to the climate here, but I haven't seen a significant difference in my plants. Sometimes cheaper per seed than other places, but they could use better filtering options on their site.
• Victory Seeds
  • Have varieties I've not seen on the other three, including many dwarf and micro types (just bought a few to try out growing indoors over the winter), but man what awful photos! I'll admit I'm shallow, but consistent, well-lit, high resolution photos of tomatoes are much more appealing.

Places I've not yet purchased from:

• Adaptive Seeds
• Artisan Seeds
• Bounty Hunter Seeds
• Delectation of Tomatoes
• Eden Brothers
• Happy Cat Farm
• MIgardener
• Renaissance Farms
• Seed Savers Exchange
• Seeds Now
• Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
• Territorial Seed Company
• Tim's Tomatoes
• Tomato Growers Supply
• TomatoFest
• Totally Tomatoes
• Urban Farmer
• Wild Boar Farms

[Image description: a raised garden bed with a focus on a small tomato plant. The lower branches along the stem are brown and dead, but the upper branches have healthy new growth.]

Sad I missed out on getting a ticket for the tomato tasting happy hour they're holding in LA this Saturday, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for the next!

Though that Black Pineapple I'm pretty sure must have crossed with something else, it's normally green with splashes of red, not orange with red.

[Image description: a cutting board with seven medium to large sized tomatoes of varying colors, with the name next to each. The tomatoes are the Golden King of Siberia, the Black Pineapple (or Ananas Noire), the Berkeley Tie Dye Green, the Sart Roloise, the Dr. Wyche's Yellow, the German Pink, and the Black Beauty.]

[Image description: three roughly heart-shaped slices of a yellow beefsteak tomato tinged with pink, on a blue plate.]

Tried these for a few seasons before I finally had to admit they weren't suited to my climate/gardening style. They're deliciously sweet, but go from underripe to overripe very quickly, and don't hold well on the vine or on the counter. That meant the overripe fruit would often pop between my fingers as I was picking them.

[Image description: a hand holding two yellow cherry tomatoes with deep red shoulders, the greenery on the tops of the tomatoes has been plucked off, revealing bright yellow star shapes where the fruit was shaded.]

Man, if you ever want to eat 10,000 tomatoes in a season, plant yourself a Spoon Tomato.

I made the mistake of growing two of these last summer, and each grew up, over, and across the length of my trellis arch, about 20' in length. To keep them from utterly smothering their neighbors required pruning fistfuls of vines literally daily.

It's insanely prolific in fruits too, I gave up harvesting them all when I was picking hundreds a day. That sounds great, but each is the size of a pea or smaller, and they had the tendency to split at the top rather than keeping their caps, so they didn't store well at all.

The flipside is they do have a great tart, intense tomato flavor. I mostly ate them as garden snacks, or sprinkled on salads or focaccia.

[Image description: a small metal spoon holding a dozen tiny, bright red round cherry tomatoes. Green tomatoes and flowers are seen on the vine adjacent to the spoon.]

[Image description: a hand holding a bright yellow, medium sized, heart shaped tomato. The tomato has some light scaring and zippering near its shoulders.]

[Image description: a hand holding a heavily ribbed, bright orange, heart shaped tomato.]

[Image description: a hand holding a plum-sized tomato with dark blue-black shoulders grading to red on the base< with sunflowers in the in the unfocused background.]

[Image description: a cluster of cherry tomatoes on the vine, each with a top to bottom gradient of purple to green, and with chunky dark purple stripes over the whole tomato.]

These are literally the best flavored tomatoes out of the dozens of heirloom and hybrid varieties I've grown. Surprisingly temperamental plants make them more difficult to grow, but man is it so worth the effort. They are savory, and balanced with just the right amount of sweet and tart.

[Image description: a hand holding a vine cluster of elongated oval cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes are subtly striped with a gradient of color ranging from brown to purple to red to green.]

I do wonder where they're getting their water, we had an unusually wet spring, so maybe deeper soil is still moist. But another option is that it's growing in an area sandwiched between mine and my neighbor's pools, and maybe one or both of them are leaking 😓

Another interesting thing is that I believe these to be bird dropping volunteers. I've never tried to grow anything here (the previous owners used to drain their pool water here, always thought the chlorine would have hurt the soil), and I've never put compost down that may have had stray seeds. They also don't look quite like any tomatoes I've grown before.

[Image description: a hand holding a red plum sized tomato and a red mini cherry tomato. Unfocused in the background are two sprawling tomato plants, growing together to look like one.]

This sweet millions plant has been a chonker since I got it.

Was the first one with any maters on it. Today, when I was fixing the ties to the trellis, I knocked a small green tomato off.

Of course, I had to taste it. Even green it was delicious... though it had an interesting apple flavor and bite to it.

I had a greenhouse mishap this spring, causing me to have to buy a lot of plants from the store.

I can't wait to see what all she gives me!

But next year, its back to from seed only.

Looked beautiful from the side, but the bottom had split and was being eaten away by earwigs. Luckily, the damage was only to the bottom third, so it still made some good slices:

!

[Image description: main photo is split, with a hand holding a good looking red beefsteak tomato above, and the same tomato rotated to show the damaged bottom below. The second photo shows a cross-section of the same tomato, with no visible damage.]

Man I'm a sucker for big beefsteaks 😅

[Image description: a hand holding a large orange tomato with splashes of green on its shoulders, in front of green tomato foliage]

Honestly I wasn't too impressed with these guys, and probably won't grow them again. They were very productive, and didn't really suffer any blossom end rot like many roma types are prone to, but their flavor was very meh. Not sweet, tart, or savory, they were exceedingly bland. I mostly used them to bulk up chili verdes, or thin out a salsa that got overly spicy.

[Image description: a hand holding three yellow elongated tomatoes in front of a tomato plant.]

I use a blend of coco choir, vermiculite, and worm casings for my seed starting.

[Image description: close up of rows of seedlings in plastic trays under a grow light. Each cell has a popsicle stick with a number written on it.]

Hello tomato friends!

[Image description: a hand holding a pinkish red beefsteak tomato, which covers most of the hand. Tomato vines are visible in the background]

(Highly annoying bug that rotates some photos, anyone know a fix?)

[Image description: a large red tomato with orange stripes, nestled among other striped tomatoes of varying ripeness.]

Made using standard romas, Sungold, and Cherokee Purple tomatoes. Crazy different in flavor, the Sungold was overly sweet, the Cherokee Purple wonderfully savory, and definitely my favorite.

[Image description: three glass jars filled with pasta sauce, one red in color, one yellowy orange, and one orangey brown.]

[Image description: slices of a variety of heirloom tomatoes on a plate, layered with slices and shreds of mozzarella and basil leaves, some on slices of bread, all drizzled with balsamic glaze.]

[Image description: a hand holding a dark orange tomato with a bit of green stem attached, viewed from the top.]