worst tomato you have ever grown

[PaulF]

Orange Russian #117 is a funny one. Some years it is the very best tasting and looking and producing tomato in the garden. Some years it deserves a spitter name tag. About one in three years OR117 comes through like a champ. So I have decided to grow it every third year. This is the year.

[sjamesNorway]

Originally Posted by PaulF

Orange Russian #117 is a funny one. Some years it is the very best tasting and looking and producing tomato in the garden. Some years it deserves a spitter name tag. About one in three years OR117 comes through like a champ. So I have decided to grow it every third year. This is the year.

Sounds like a very effective strategy.

[StephenCoote]

I've just come up with my own 'taste' categories for raw tomatoes.... they are 1. awful, 2. bland, 3. ok, and 4. excellent.

I have tasted one or two unpleasant tomatoes, but I cant recall what they were. Most of what I grow generally turns out to be somewhere in the bland to ok spectrum.

Right now it seems that the healthiest, most prolific plants generally produce fruit that is not outstanding in flavour - in my garden anyway. However, I've found that tomatoes that are a bit bland when fresh can be very acceptable when cooked. I grow Stupice as an early and reliable tomato, and I've made a lot of excellent sauce from this variety. And sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised when I bite into a fresh one... although mostly they are relatively bland.

I'm thinking that maybe I over-water my plants. And I've probably still got a lot to learn about what I can do as a gardener to produce the tastiest fruit. I've read some reports stating that Stupice tastes good. Others don't rate it as highly. I'd like to know what makes the difference.

Last season one of my tastiest varieties was Harry's Large, but I got very few fruit. This year the yield is low again. I'm thinking that although it might taste good, why waste valuable garden space on this type when I could have a plant in its place that might produce ten times the yield.

This year I've had a surprise. I grew one 'Gold Nugget' plant. I grew this variety for the first time last year. The crop wasn't huge, but it produced useful tomatoes over a long period and some of them tasted pretty darn good. So I saved the seed and started several plants. I planted only one and gave the rest away. As it grew I noticed that the fruit were getting larger than the fruit I got last year. Then it was apparent the the fruit would be red instead of gold and that this was a vine plant rather than a bush. It was still one of the first types to ripen, and it looks like it will be a productive plant. Furthermore some of the fruit has been in the 'good' flavour category.

I don't know why this plant isn't a Gold Nugget. I'm pretty careful about saving and labelling my seed. An odd seed may have dropped into the batch, or maybe the Gold Nugget plant was cross pollinated. Last year I grew it near Matts Cherry, Stupice and Harry's Large... all red fruit. Anyway, needless to say I will be saving seed and hoping for a similar crop next year. Incidentally, Matts Cherry was not a success in my garden. The plant grew big, but the flavour of the fruit was nothing to rave about. Plus I figure why fiddle about with tiny tomatoes when there are bigger ones to process. I'd read a lot of hype on the 'net about Matts Cherry and I planted some thinking that this might be the wonder tomato I've dreamed about. It wasn't.

Here's a pic of what I got instead of Gold Nugget:

[bower]

Have to agree that Violet Jasper was awful. Tough skin and mealy inside.
Still the absolute worst I ever tasted was a pimpinellifolium... technically not a tomato I guess. Literally inedible as in a strong and offensive taste... as in spit and rinse your mouth too.
Another one with a slightly wierd and just not pleasing taste was Black Russian. Edible but nobody actually liked it.
I personally disliked Russian Mini Yellow as well. It has a bit of taste carry over from the wild relatives IMO which just makes me queasy. BUT other people found it exotically nice. Not me.
I admit I'm in no hurry to try a blue tomato.
No point in listing the bland or mealy or boring early reds in the "never grow again" list.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by bower

Have to agree that Violet Jasper was awful. Tough skin and mealy inside.
Still the absolute worst I ever tasted was a pimpinellifolium... technically not a tomato I guess. Literally inedible as in a strong and offensive taste... as in spit and rinse your mouth too.
Another one with a slightly wierd and just not pleasing taste was Black Russian. Edible but nobody actually liked it.
I personally disliked Russian Mini Yellow as well. It has a bit of taste carry over from the wild relatives IMO which just makes me queasy. BUT other people found it exotically nice. Not me.
I admit I'm in no hurry to try a blue tomato.
No point in listing the bland or mealy or boring early reds in the "never grow again" list.

Yes, S. pimpinelifolium, also known as currant tomatoes, are very much tomatoes and played a major role in the evolution of the tomato.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato

Take this one for example

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Sara%27s_Galapagos

Tania doesn't have all the info right,yes, a stable interspecies cross and one was a pimp and somewhere I had the info as to what the other one was.

It was subsequently shown by DNA analyses done in England that there are many such stable ones out there, and yes, I think the taste of the Sara one is outstanding.

Lastly, there are two researchers at the USDA station in Geneva,NY,who have been doing snip DNA analyses and found pimp gene fragments in I can't remember how many tomato varieties. Which just confirms that indeed the pimp has been crucial in the evolution of the tomato..

Carolyn

[vegomatic]

Originally Posted by k3vin

Purple Calabash and Fleur de Regair both had the same bitter/astringent/weedy taste that made them inedible for me. Hmm ... even though i grew them years apart, now that I think about it, they look and taste similar enough, I wonder if they aren't the same variety, or very closely related....?

I grew a Purple Calabash from USDA seed. They and you were both correct. Astoundingly bland flavor with a bit of a lingering aftertaste.

"PURPLE CALABASH USDA PI 290857 More of a novelty tomato grown for it's deep purple fruits, flavor apparently not that good. Indeterminate. Donor: Texas A&M University, 1963. Comment: NC-7 Source of Crl, cr2 genes for crimson color and high lycopene parentage in new 'High Crimson'; fruit purple."

And I concur with the concensus on Banana Legs. Many of my USDA selections were because of an unusual name or some growth habit or from some far-away place. Most all of mine had BER, the few we got to sample were compost-ready. Cool-looking fruits, though. "BANANA LEGS 70-75 days. USDA PI 547525 97GI. Very prolific and long-lasting. The bright yellow, pointed, banana-shaped fruits, 4 inches long by 1 1/2 inches in diameter, are meaty and low in acid, making them especially good for slicing into salads. Determinate. Donor:Totally Tomatoes. Area grown, seemed very prone to blossom-end rot (BER)."

One of my first "heirloom" seed orders was for Cherokee Purple. What I received and grew out wasn't correct. It was some bland, mealy pink. I don't know what it was. Grew it again, same result. I still have the seeds that were left. I think it was this packaging error that drew me first to Gardenweb and then here to learn more. I searched for pics and info to try to guess what I actually had grown versus what it should have been and things just kinda went from there for about a decade or so. After a hiatus, I'm looking for the Next Great Fail. LOL!
-Ed

But even worse were a few of my growouts of Sungold. There were some marvelous variations on the original, from small lemony types to a darker orange I almost preferred. The loser offtypes were truly bitter spitters. But you could not tell them apart from the original on a plate, until you tried one! Gaak! After that, we kept fruits from each plant separated for taste-testing.

-Ed

[ABlindHog]

Several years ago my wife brought home a yellow pear plant, I planted it alongside the other tomatoes I was growing that year. I gave it the same tender loving care that all the others received. It was entirely tasteless, had awful mouth feel and was a complete waste of garden space. Last year she brought home another yellow pear. I planted it in a too small pot and put it by itself on the second floor deck. I fed it once and watered it twice before I forgot about it. In July when I pull out my spring plants I remembered it. I went up to the deck and found it sticking out of a pot shaped adobe block mostly denuded by the heat. A few leaves clung to a couple of stems with a bit of green still showing. The stunted plant was covered with fully ripened little yellow orange pear shaped tomatoes that where absolutely delicious, they burst in your mouth with full bright flavor and before you could swallow it you found yourself reaching for another. Not sure exactly what it was that I learned but surely there is a lesson in there somewhere.

[MarlynnMarcks]

Hillbilly got every kind of disease even before it made tomatoes. Had to yank it out before it contaminated the rest.

[vegomatic]

Originally Posted by ABlindHog

Not sure exactly what it was that I learned but surely there is a lesson in there somewhere.

That can happen planting seeds with unknown heritage. If the original was an F1 hybrid, you'd see all sorts of variation, possibly just like the original or any of the ones used to create it.

Just as I saw with my Sungold growouts, most were a little different tasting or looking and a few were absolutely inedible. If you try the experiment again, save seeds from any plant you enjoy and keep growing and saving the best from it each season.

Another factor can be the heat and watering stress. I've read in other threads of a similarly neglected tomato having the best flavor.

I'd say your tasty tom was showing a little of both influences and the first one that was a dud may have had traits from one of the parent plants that only added genes for color, shape or improved disease resistance.
-Ed

[MissMoustache]

Patio.

Disgusting. I am ashamed that I gave plants away without tasting them. Never growing it again.

Celebrity and Early Girl are spitters in my opinion too. I used to wonder why my parents bothered growing them when they tasted exactly like grocery store tomatoes. I didn't even LIKE raw tomatoes until I started to grow heirlooms.

[Labradors2]

Ed,

Yellow Pear is OP and usually tastes bland. It sounds to me as if the one that ABlindHog grew was gasping for water and that made the difference. Perhaps that is why some people actually think that YP tastes good!

Linda

[Fred Hempel]

I agree with the Purple Calabash descriptions.

[StephenCoote]

Your well-written post was a delight to read Ablindhog ! I don't know for sure why a certain variety of tomato can taste better in one season compared to another, but I reckon that less water may improve flavour (at the expense of total harvest weight).

One season I grew a variety called Rollys Red. The fruit was ok, but the flavour was unremarkable. The next season a "wild" tomato plant grew in a small gap in the pavement just inches from where I'd grown the Rollys Red. The plant was spindly and only produced a few fruit, but they were tangy and absolutely delicious. The plant may not have been an offspring of the Rollys, but it most likely was as our garden had only recently been created from what was a farm paddock. I saved the seeds and grew them in a cultivated bed the following season, but the flavour of the resulting fruit was unimpressive.

[oakley]

I grew red and yellow pear for years and defended it until SunGold came along...and now many others.
Again last year i started a couple but a tray headed to the garden in red cups one toppled and broke off.
"oh good, no tragic loss, it's a YellowPear".

Some years better than others and some seed must just be better. No room this year and
maybe never...thanks to Artisan.

I'll grow some blue antho's again because of their long counter life. Found them to be spitters until roasted and turn to amazing stuffers, stuffed with fresh herbed goat cheese.

[Tormato]

It's between "Ursa Major Disappointment"...(it was supposed to be Bear Claw, but clearly wasn't)...

and "Elbonian Mud Ball". That story (with a full description of the taste) can be found in the T'ville archives.

Dr Lve Apple