Topic: Best tomato flavour

[Beersmith]

Much as I love the flavour of sungold tomatoes this season revealed it's biggest weakness - namely splitting.

The prolonged lack of rainfall followed by the occasional cloudbursts caused incredibly high levels of splitting.  I'd guess more than half the fruit split.  It was discouraging to see so much waste. Given the huge variety of tomato seeds on offer my plan is to look for a different variety next year.  I usually grow mostly sungold with the odd other type for fun / experiment. This year I tried a blight resistant type. Mountain magic. As it happened there was a complete absence of blight this year, the flavour was OK but fairly average.

So if my priority is to grow for flavour what varieties should I choose?

[Obelixx]

I tried Sungold a couple of years ago and found the flavour a huge disappointment.  Very bland.  I grew yellow and red pear and found those much better.

This year I tried Coeur de Pigeon, an oval, cherry tomato and they were delicious - juicy, sweet but with a tang and good tomato flavour.   Great for nibbling as I passed the plant but also great in salads and quick sauces.

Rose de Berne was good last year but not as flavoursome this year.  I love the big beef tomatoes for slicing in salads and tarts and this year black Brandywine was the best.  I'm told Pink Brandywine is better so will be looking for that for next year.

[pumkinlover]

Last year I grew Old Red Cherry which was plentiful, sweet and tasty.
This year Blush was nice and also Ihad one plant of Sweet Aperatif from the seed swop. It grew very slowly and only a few ripe but it was lovely, and is commercially available.

[peanuts]

Our tomatoes are very late this year to fruit and ripen, because of the set back mid-June with the hail, so we had to start all over again.  We were given various replacement plants, some unnamed, but the one sungold is still the sweetest flavour.  We find it really interesting  to do blind tastings of pieces from each - the flavours are so different!  One is a black cherry, prolific but not particularly attractive, and which is really acid compared to the Sungold.  But for salads, the Délice de Burpé, and Coeur de boeuf win hands down. 
I had one bought plant that just survived the hail, a grafted one, 'ordinary' size, but I no longer have the variety name.  They are more expensive to buy, but the trick is to grow the first four good side shoots up separate canes, so ending up with five plants.  The hail massacred the main plant but small side shoots survived and grew.  Last week I counted 100 tomatoes just waiting to ripen properly.  It looked magnificent, and proves it is well worth the extra cost.

[Beersmith]

Thank you all.

Much food for thought there.  Some of the suggestions are varieties I've not previously heard of, so worth investigating. 

Some of it is always happen chance.  Most seasons blight is a problem sooner or later, but drought, splitting and some even damaged by heat and sunburn was rather unusual.  On the hottest day of the year I had some crops literally burnt by intense sunshine. I was lucky not to get any hail storm damage but these chance events can throw out the best laid plans.

I'm reading a King's catalogue as I type!!

[Vetivert]

Beersmith, if you are looking for new cherry tomatoes varieties, particularly supersweets, I can recommended the Ambrosia series. I wouldn't say they are resistant to splitting, but the flavour is intense and incredibly sweet. Happy to send you some seeds later in autumn if you'd like to try them. 

For a blight-resistant outdoor cherry I've heard that Primabella is good, though I haven't tried it yet.

[Deb P]

My two favourites this year are Latah which we’re grown outdoors at the plot and have been fantastic, slow to split, lovely flavour, but the overall winner for taste was a variety new to me this year, Burmese Sour. Outstanding complex rich tomato flavour, grown in the greenhouse and late to mature cushion shaped fruits which do have a habit of going a bit soft and prone to mould if the fruit gets wet like all cushion types. I’m going to try some outdoors at the plot next year.

[Vinlander]

I'll continue to grow Sungold and Gardeners' Delight for flavour - the splitting is only a problem if you can't pick every day - I just eat them straight off the plant and rely on the Green Tiger family for salads because they have thicker skins, and a richer meatier taste - some people think that makes them cooking tomatoes, their loss not mine. 

The GT family one called Shimmer has more tender skins but still nothing like Sungolds that can split if you look at them funny. Artisan Green Tiger are delicious - they have that almost creamy taste I vaguely remember from Green Zebra - must have been back-crossed with GZ.

I grew some Green Zebra this year because they were available in the garden centre - I knew they were tricky despite the hype, but I thought it worth a try because my PolyTunnel is so much better than what I had last time - but this chilly September has stopped them despite that - don't believe the BS about them being mid-season - in Jamaica maybe...

I haven't tried Mountain Magic but both Crimson Crush and Cocktail Crush have a genuinely good flavour - no comparison with Sungold but much better than anything in the shops (excepting Piccolo/ino) - OTOH the early blight-frees were appalling - twice as watery as even Moneymaker - the first Ferline I tasted was so awful I dumped them all on the compost heap and went to the supermarket. 

Cheers.

[boydzfish]

I grow a variety called Aviditas, a small plum type from Dobies. They are very heavy croppers (Well mine are) and taste amazing. Premio is another good one, a standard size tomato.

[Beersmith]

I feel like a kid in a sweet shop.  So many to consider I'm spoilt for choice.  I tried a single piccolo from saved seeds this year and it was very good.  A few winter evenings scouring the catalogues and t'internet seems in prospect.

[Tulipa]

For flavour I grow Supersweet 100, Sweet Millions and Sweet Aperatif in my greenhouse and when I first trialed them with Sungold they were sweeter and very prolific.  I have checked them all and they can be grown outdoors too. It would be hard for me to change, I do buy single plants of others to try with them but they don't match up.  Sorry to add more suggestions!  I have no splitting but grow on an irrigation system so can't advise on that. Enjoy whatever you grow :)

[Vinlander]

It's a bit of a digression, but I also have a sort-of "dripper" system in my greenhouse - the whole floor is 5-6cm of old multi-used & re-used peat-based compost on top of a single black plastic sheet (I know some people will be horrified but if I used non-peat it would be all but gone 2 years later).

It's a perfect on-demand system because there is a depression in the NE corner, so there's a built-in trough in the plastic sheet - this trough is kept clear of peat but joined to it by a short section of capillary mat - the ball thingy "C.O.C.K" or cockerel without the erel* in the trough provides water only after the plants take it (* the bowdler on this site is trying to make me look illiterate - thingy indeed). 

The peat is always damp underneath - the plants sit on landscape fabric on the peaty layer  - which means that any roots that escape into it can be removed easily next year (anyone who has ever tried getting roots out of capillary matting will know how important this is).

Anyway, to get back to the point, I still get split fruits sometimes when it rains outside - especially after dry periods. My plants are completely immune to over-watering - so the only explanation is the humidity change. Since my water isn't dripping onto the surface, I suspect my system means the humidity tracks the outdoors quite quickly.

This makes me think that water-uptake has a kind of momentum - if the humidity increases quickly the momentum splits the skins.

I'm convinced my system is much better for Ring-Culture - especially in a water-shortage - it certainly uses less water than drippers in a border, but maybe I should install a dripper or two to manage the humidity on the surface - to see if I get less splitting.

Cheers.