Biggest Tomato Contest 2020

Most large tomatoes have streaks of hard white tissue radiating out from the stem. I’m impressed that this tomato is so large, yet has none of the stem tissue except right where the stem is attached.

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Here’s a Question about hefty tomatoes.
If you pick it (or it falls off) green . . . and you weigh it . . . will it weigh more once it ripens???

For your stated conditions, yes, it will weigh more when ripe. This is because a tomato continues to enlarge right up to the point where it turns from green to pale white as it ripens. However, the weight increase between green and ripe is usually minimal.

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It’s not my production, it was an offer by a friend.
The biggest tomato weight 1kg… It’s the coração de boi variety.

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Wait a second…a green tomato disconnected from the stem can gain weight? Where would this weight come from? I could see a picked tomato growing more dense, but not gaining weight.

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It only applies if the fruit is still attached to the vine. A fruit picked green will weigh a tad less than the same fruit picked ripe. Why on earth would anyone want to pick a tomato green and then let it ripen? It would taste nasty, just like the store bought ethylene ripened cardboard tomatoes.

coração de boi is Bulls Heart which is a very dense meaty oxheart type tomato. It makes excellent sauce.

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The biggest I’ve gotten so far. A Mme de Beauve. I have one of this type come in at just over 2 pounds before, but I’m not sure if we’ll get one that big this year. 2 1/2 months without rain and then multiple days of it has rushed a bunch of ripening.

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We make sauce, jam, in salads and in freeze to use latter. It’s very sweet without acidity.

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This is probably the biggest tomato I’ll have this year unless something surprises me. It’s a Delicious Hunt Strain.

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Kellogg’s Breakfast 1 lb 7 oz

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I have tried to grow KB for several years, unsuccessfully.
Yours looks perfect, @ztom !

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What a pretty color! Never grew these.

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Stump of the World
Not ripe, but had to remove from vine because stem was damaged in ‘hurricane’.

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I’ve seen posts this year on social media about picking tomatoes at first blush. Supposedly ones picked at first blush and ripened on a counter taste the exact same as vine ripened ones. I haven’t researched to see if this is true, but there’s quite a few people I’ve seen doing it this way. Have you seen/experienced/read this before?

This is pure BS. A vine ripened tomato accumulates sugar and flavonoids during the transition from first blush to fully ripe. It is impossible for a counter ripened tomato to taste the same. This is one of the many reasons why store bought tomatoes today taste like trash.

Start with genetics. Commercial tomatoes are bred to ripen uniformly. The gene for uniform ripening significantly reduces chlorophyll in the fruit which has a very bad effect on flavor. Commercial tomatoes are bred to be firm so they can be shipped across the country. They soften when gassed with ethylene, but are still rock hard by comparison with a home grown heirloom tomato. Commercial tomatoes were selected for 60 years to have ideal commercial traits including disease resistance, uniform size, uniform shape, and a ton of other traits. Guess which trait was NOT selected for? Flavor! Plain old tomato flavor was not a selection criteria. This is why Harry Klee went back to the drawing board and researched which tomatoes were perceived as tasting good. He then bred Tasti-Lee to incorporate the findings. You can grow perfectly good tomatoes in your garden that taste like tomatoes… or you can grow commercial varieties like Celebrity that have relatively little flavor (they are still better than grocery store picked green tomatoes).

Grow Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Jaune Flammee, Eva Purple Ball, Black Krim, Cuostralee, Kelloggs Breakfast, and maybe Big Beef. This will give anyone a good basis to understand the nuances of good tomato flavor.

I will include one caveat which is that some tomatoes are best picked slightly before they are fully ripe. Let them sit on a counter a day or so until they have the right texture and color. Don’t ever pick a green or slightly colored tomato expecting it to taste like a vine ripe tomato after it looks visually “ripe” on a counter.

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That’s what I suspected. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

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Definitely not the biggest entry on here, but I was impressed how big this one got without any particular effort on my part.

Not sure which variety. It was from a mix and I’ll have to sleuth it out.

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Tag is lost somewhere in the weeds for this one

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Those are some shiny tomatoes! I’ve never heard of them before. Are they really tasty? Acidic?

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Delicious all most two pound :sunglasses:

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