2022-09-21T07:00:00Z Holly Silvester
I have been trialling growing some tomatoes outdoors this year with mixed results, the biggest challenge being that the field had no irrigation hooked up until late July and we’ve been having a pretty intense heat wave here in the UK. I had predicted our normal mild damp summer and prolific blight would be the challenge, but it seems the climate has had other ideas this summer! By chance, one of the varieties I have been growing in the field is also being grown in the polytunnels here on the farm. So I thought it a great opportunity to compare some brix tests between plants that have been very much ‘nurtured’ and those that have experienced a lot of stress…with interesting results. The tomatoes in the field, although much smaller and less productive, had much higher brix in both leaf and fruit compared to the tunnel grown plants. They had been under a huge amount of stress, particularly due to lack of water, but it seems this has led them to produce fruit that is potentially more nutritionally dense, in keeping with the content on plant stress in the course. Brix results aside, just tasting the fruit has been proof for me, they are 100 times sweeter and tastier than those grown under protected conditions. It’s been a great opportunity to observe how both sets of plants have behaved. I’m saving seed from the outdoor plants (well, any that don’t succumb to blight) and will continue to monitor the brix and taste next season too and potentially start selecting based on the results.
Masha Z
What a great natural experiment! Which variety is it?
Holly S
its a red ruby cherry originally from Wild Mountain seeds
Thomas P
yesterday a farmer told me that his tomatoes grown outside the greenhouse were allways the tastiest. So he plants partially in greenhouses only because by doing he can bring tomato to the market around June, when they are more expensive, and less worrying about mildew / late blight which occurs in open field. He has been doing this for about 20 years and allways had the same difference in taste.
Mark R
Seems like to me that tomatoes always taste better when the weather is hotter and drier than when cool and damp. Melons are like that too and strawberries, lots of things in fact. Sometimes things taste different depending on time of day its picked. My cherry tomatoes and especially strawberries taste much better in the hot sunny afternoon than if picked in the cool early morning.
Still there is a genetic component involved, I’m sure. My cherry tomatoes all grow mixed up together on the same trellises in the exact same conditions and some are most definitely sweeter than others.
If nutrient density follows flavor or the other way around as I expect, generally it does. Is it possible nutrient density also fluctuates according to conditions at the time of harvest?
I also like tomatoes that are not sweet for many uses such as making sauce, so I grow a lot of them too, I hate sweet tomato sauce. Has anyone else ever noticed a tomato grown under drought and heat stress tasting kind of salty?
Julia D
@Mark Reed yes, because esp. during hot or stressful temps, the plant is pumping up antioxidents to protect itself, also think of picking lettuce in the PM vs AM. Strawberries and tomatoes generate lycopene to protect them from the UV rays in the afternoons. I should add that timing thing to that lesson. Did you read that chapter?
One of my challenges here without enough sun/warmth is getting some things to be sweet for sure! Last year I tried adding some sea salt to the soil around some plants in order to get them to stress out and sweeten up, (turning off the water wasn’t effective enough) it worked, but then I read Landrace Gardening lol and decided needed to switch tactics. I suspect whichever melons can mature will all be very bland :(. But at least squash doesn’t seem to follow the same heat/ sweetness rule, at least the LH maxima doesn’t.
Mark R
My musk and watermelons are just about gone now but they tasted like candy this year, as they generally do. It had been quite hot and dry for a long time and turned much wetter just as most were maturing so I was worried they wouldn’t be good, but I guess they had stored up enough flavor before the wet weather happened. A few watermelons blew up though as they sometimes will when going from dry to overly wet very quickly.
PM/AM lettuce, that’s certainly true. Just as some things like the strawberries and tomatoes are better hot, other things are better cool. I’m sure that’s why my broccol-ish is so good, maturing as it does while the nights are still frosty.
I wonder if the broccol-ish, lettuce and the like, harvested after it gets hot are actually more nutritious, even though they tend to taste awful. If so, too bad cause I’m gonna eat them while they taste good.
Cheryl M
I dry farm our tomatoes and they always taste amazing!
It’s possible that the broccolish will have more nutrition grown in hot weather, but my suspicion is that your body will tell you what tastes good based on what has the most valuable nutrition for you. (Except in the rare cases where a plant tricks it – for instance, stevia tastes sweet but has no calories.)