North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

Rivka wrote:  In my experience, flavor varies a great deal with variety, and it's possible that some varieties will produce good flavor on soils with clay while others require sand. I don't know whether organic growing techniques might also be making a difference.

 

I wasn't paying a lot of attention to this discussion till this point.  I'm a tomato fanatic, and have my favorite 20 or so varieties that I save seed of.  I've probably tried well over a hundred varieties.  Last year I tried a new variety, had 7 plants in a tomato ring beside two other tomato rings.  Lahman Pink and Olga's Round Yellow Chicken were as good as ever, but the new varriety, Borgana Celano I think it was called, had zero flavor but a rather weird smell, especially when cooked.  I canned a lot of them, telling my husband they couldn't be worse than commercial canned tomatoes.  But there came a time when I was so disgusted with them that I let the chickens have the rest.   I think we like different things in tomatoes.  For example, I really like cherry tomatoes but I know someone who dislikes the flavor.  I admit, they do taste different, and so I had her try some Cherry Brandywines that were supposed to taste like full sized Brandywines.  She said they tasted like large tomatoes, not cherry tomatoes.  And then there is soil and climate.  I really do think that the same tomato variety can be good one place and boring another.   The "bicolors", mostly yellow above and pink or red underneath, are said to be better flavored here than further south.  I note the "black" tomatoes tend to be praised by northerners, perhaps because they heat up in the sun and are able to metabolize like they were further south.  And last but not least, too much nitrogen makes for a lot of water in fruits and veggies, and sometimes lower sugars.  Certainly trace minerals make a difference.  Copper is said to affect acidity in tomatoes. 

    Having said all this, I am sure that a lot of it holds true for melons.  Do dark skinned melons do better up north, light skinned ones better down south?    Donna