Beginner Gardening: Experimental Tomato Harvest Technique, 1 by wildredmater

wildredmater wrote:
Hi guys,

I have some wild tomatoes that just sprouted spontaneously in my front yard in a weed pile. Anyways, I tasted the first batch and they were kinda bland, so I did an experiment. For the next harvest batch, I purposely did not water them for three hot, sunny Texas days. It did not rain for 3 days. I reasoned that witholding water for 3 days before harvest will concentrate the flavor. I then harvested my tomatoes.

Next, I purchased some medium sized tomatoes from Costco (the best tomatoey tasting tomatoes I know of) and some grape tomatoes (the sweetest tomatoes I know of).

Then, I poured a cup of filtered water to rinse my mouth out between tastings.

Finally, I tasted my tomato, sipped water, tasted the Costco tomato, sipped water, tasted the grape tomato, sipped water, then tasted my tomato again.

The grape tomatoes were sweetest, but the skin was kinda tough. It did not have much tomatoey flavor.

The Costco tomatoes had thinner skin and was a bit more juicy than the grape tomato. It had a stronger tomatoey flavor but was not very sweet.

The home grown tomato had a slightly stronger tomatoey flavor with some sweetness to it. It was not a sweet as the grape tomato, but it was about 80% as sweet. It was juicier than both the Costco and the grape tomato. It's taste was in-between the Costco and the grape tomato in terms of acid-sweet balance, but it had a much more stronger in taste. In other words, it was more flavorful and more juicy. These home-grown wild tomatoes were vine-ripened to full ripeness and were about 1-2 inches in diameter. They were smaller than the Costco tomatoes but bigger than the grape tomatoes. They were about the size of golf balls, some slightly larger or smaller. The color was dark orange-red.

I had no idea home-grown tomatoes were this good!

My wife is still suspicious that these are poisonous nightshade, so she still hasn't eaten any yet. Oh well, more for me! These are too big to be nightshade and too sweet, too. Poinsonous plants are bitter.