worst tasting tomato of the year award goes to

[rxkeith]

rosalita not

i got this one from a church member that loves rosalita for drying.
it must have crossed with a child of mud because thats how it tasted.
i would love to see garys' description of the flavor.
anyway, the result was a small red jelly bean tomato that was dry, and had a strong
off putting taste. prolific as heck, but yech!! closest thing to a spitter i have ever grown.
it didn't matter when i picked them, the flavor never improved. chicken food was all they
were good for.


keith

[Julianna]

I was gifted a pot with a "yummy black slicer tomato" that had overwintered. It was some kind of orangish red small cherry. The flavor was as if you initially bit into a stick of chalk which had a center of battery acid and powdered laundry detergent. And not the nice detergent, but the heavy duty cheap bulk kind I grew up with that came from Sears.if you waited long enough, that flavor profile was tinged with the liquid extract of rotten potato and onions at the bottom of a warm trash can on a summer day. I left it for the birds and raccoons but no one would touch it. Not even the gophers. My husband said they were his favorite.

[Tormahto]

I was gifted a pot with a "yummy black slicer tomato" that had overwintered. It was some kind of orangish red small cherry. The flavor was as if you initially bit into a stick of chalk which had a center of battery acid and powdered laundry detergent. And not the nice detergent, but the heavy duty cheap bulk kind I grew up with that came from Sears.if you waited long enough, that flavor profile was tinged with the liquid extract of rotten potato and onions at the bottom.of.a warm trash can on a summer day. I left it foe the birds and raccoons but no one would touch it. Not even the gophers. My husband said they were his favorite.

Tomato poetry.

[bower]

I have rarely been moved to such effusive dis-praise, but the poetry reminds me of years ago, in the enthusiasm of amateur breeding, I grew a Pimpinellifolium, which was SO vile and disgusting I never grew another, nor ever again entertained the fool notion of crossing it or any other wild relative with a tomato!
Tasted but once, forever foresworn. Loudly and with spitting.

[Yak54]

Very humorous description !

Dan

[karstopography]

The worst I’ve ever grown were San Marzano. They were just mostly hollow, dry and pretty tasteless. Might of been the growing conditions. Maybe a dud plant.

[bower]

Tasteless is a virtue, bland is a precious gift, compared to Julianna's "yummy black slicer".....

[Tormahto]

The worst I’ve ever grown were San Marzano. They were just mostly hollow, dry and pretty tasteless. Might of been the growing conditions. Maybe a dud plant.

You haven't lived until you've tried a truly wretched tomato, a strongly flavored spitter, that hopefully doesn't make you question the existence of God.

[OhioGardener]

I'll volunteer Gapan Native for this competition . The description I found for it on Tomatoville is more explicit than the Mmmm swap label I tagged it with gently warning folks. I'm not one to shy away from assertive flavor either. I have a strain of Purple Calabash that we're always loved because it's a good assertive flavor and I like Jaune Flamme too. This is no good at all...a sour, astringent, battery acid sort of flavor.

[karstopography]

@Tormato So why would anyone intentionally grow a tomato and continue to propagate a tomato with a wretched flavor? Seems like awful tomatoes should go extinct if they are so terrible. Who would grow them other than as a gag joke to play on someone or something? “Here, Susie try this tomato, I think you’ll really like it” and then fall on the ground in hysterical laughter when they spit it out! That kind of humor is great and maybe that alone is worth growing one of these awful tomatoes.

Seriously though, are these tomatoes unintentional crosses of two otherwise tasty tomatoes, an unlucky cross? Or is it tastes vary person to person and something that’s delicious to one person is terrible to another. Seems I have read somewhere on TJ that some do not like the flavor of many of the dark/purple/black/brown tomato types. I love the flavor of Cherokee Purple, really like acidity and the rich earthy and smoky notes of that tomato. Or is it some combination or climate, soil, moisture, etc. that takes an otherwise tasty tomato into the bad zone?

I’m simply curious why there are terrible tasting tomatoes. How do they come to be? Not bland, I get bland, but truly bad.

[MissS]

@Tormato So why would anyone intentionally grow a tomato and continue to propagate a tomato with a wretched flavor? Seems like awful tomatoes should go extinct if they are so terrible. Who would grow them other than as a gag joke to play on someone or something? “Here, Susie try this tomato, I think you’ll really like it” and then fall on the ground in hysterical laughter when they spit it out! That kind of humor is great and maybe that alone is worth growing one of these awful tomatoes.

Seriously though, are these tomatoes unintentional crosses of two otherwise tasty tomatoes, an unlucky cross? Or is it tastes vary person to person and something that’s delicious to one person is terrible to another. Seems I have read somewhere on TJ that some do not like the flavor of many of the dark/purple/black/brown tomato types. I love the flavor of Cherokee Purple, really like acidity and the rich earthy and smoky notes of that tomato. Or is it some combination or climate, soil, moisture, etc. that takes an otherwise tasty tomato into the bad zone?

I’m simply curious why there are terrible tasting tomatoes. How do they come to be? Not bland, I get bland, but truly bad.

There are not many that do not like the taste of a nice ripe, firm and scrumptious, juicy, well balanced dark tomato that has a hint of saltiness or smokiness to it. I only know of one such person whose taste buds are so flawed that he finds them to be so repulsive that he spits them all out. He finds that some tomatoes taste like the insides of his grandmother's sneakers. Why he would taste someone's sneakers I haven't a clue. Other dark tomatoes are compared to rotten fish. He then creates these tomatoes that he describes as such and then sneaks them into peoples seed parcels to be spread across the world.

Most tomatoes are tolerable to most of us. Some are loved by some and not so much by others and this is due to the difference in taste buds if they are sampling the same fruit. Some tomatoes grown in different soils or temperatures can have a big difference in flavor. The dark tomatoes are reported to have a better flavor in warm temperatures. Many "spitters" are from unintentional crosses. I have tasted two crosses that were the only tomatoes that I have actually spit out that they were so bad. I pulled the plants then and there and never grew those seeds again. I never want to taste them again.

[Tormahto]

I'm glad I never had those dark tomatoes snuck into my seed parcels. How do we put a stop to him, before it reaches here?

[bower]

I've heard a lot of comments about the antho 'blue' tomatoes. Never are they praised for taste unless it's "finally a blue tomato I can stand". Yet people keep growing them for the novelty value. They keep breeding them, for the hopes of producing a tasty one against all the odds.
Tomatoes and their relatives have a dark past IMO involving creatures attracted to rot, before they discovered that sweet fruits were the key to having their seeds saved and multiplied by the hairless slave-animals.

[edweather]

I'm throwing out my Costoluto Genevese seeds.