Kitchen Garden Forum

This week we picked our largest Brandywine tomato. It weighed in at 1.1kg or just short of 2½lbs. I posted photos and a video of the event on my blog here
http://glallotments.blogspot.com/2009/08/monster-tomato-sequel.html

Anyone had a bigger one?

My tomato picture is in Technical Data and it looks like I might have beaten yours by an oz or so. I've had to buy new scales as they gave up a couple of days later, couldn't reweigh it as we took it to a barbecue (I think it enjoyed it).

Can't reweigh ours either as it has also been eaten - otherwise I'd demand a reweighing then I could be really really accurate.

We had another tomato growing snuggled up to it which was about 700g. It was amazing that the plant didn't collapse!

What's the flavour like of your Brandywines, gallotments? Any that I've grown in the past have been rather disappointing, both flavour and texture.

The texture was good and the fruit really juicy but as far as taste it was rather ordinary. We haven't had the smaller fruits yet though as they are still green.

I may be totally wrong here - and if so no doubt someone will tell me - but I read that taste can be affected by how sunny it is when the fruits are ripening, how much water the plants are given and even the feed/soil etc that the toms are growing in so. If this is true it makes recommending any type of tomato hit and miss.

It is generally true that vegetables which are grown "hard" i.e not overfed or over-watered usually taste better than ones which have been pampered or pumped up with excess feed. This certainly applies to tomatoes. I'm sure the amount of sun is an important factor as well, which is why tomatoes usually taste so much better in Italy or Spain. I don't feed my tomatoes and keep them just sufficiently regularly watered to avoid blossom end rot. The nearer they come to the end of their time the less water they get. Of course a tasteless variety is always a tasteless variety

glallotments wrote:I may be totally wrong here - and if so no doubt someone will tell me - but I read that taste can be affected by how sunny it is when the fruits are ripening, how much water the plants are given and even the feed/soil etc that the toms are growing in so. If this is true it makes recommending any type of tomato hit and miss.

You've hit the nail on the head there. Brandywine earned its particular reputation for flavour in the US. There, the climate in most states is quite different from the climate here. Summers tend to be consistently hot, sunny days frequent and the temperature fairly stable. I first grew Brandywine about twenty years ago, with high expectations. It was disappointing, despite a reasonably good summer that year and growing them in a polytunnel.

The flavour of all tomatoes is affected to a degree by growing conditions, some factors over which we have control but some, like sunshine hours, over which we have none. Like Alan, I also grow my tomatoes meanly towards the end of the season, to concentrate the flavours.

I enjoyed watching the video of the 'ceremonial snip' . It looked rather like watching the harvesting of a pumpkin

Hi Primrose,
Dear God I wondered for a moment what you were going to say!
JB.

JB - all in the mind dear boy

Well that's not good.......

FelixLeiter wrote:What's the flavour like of your Brandywines, gallotments? Any that I've grown in the past have been rather disappointing, both flavour and texture.

Just an update on the flavour of Brandywine. Although the large tomato flavour was very ordinary. The smaller tomatoes that ripen higher up the vine later on and that we have just eaten had a really good flavour.

Hi Glallotments,
That is a very interesting observation and I have been sitting here trying to work out why this should be. I have come to the conclusion that there is not enough 'K' in the growing medium prior to ripening. Probably we will never know but it is fascinating never the less.
JB.