[rowlandwells]

we have been growing tomato's for some years now with fair results but one thing I haven't managed to get is a sweet tomato when I say sweet I mean a really sweet tasting tom we feed our plants with tomatorite

all plants grown in pots well watered and so on have been told tomato's need a feed of epsonsalts but never tried this maybe its the ticket for getting a sweet tomato 

we grow several varieties and this year we tried black Russian produced good sized fruits tasty but not sweet so is there anything one could use to sweeten the taste?

[mumofstig]

It is really only the small cherry toms that are sweet, notably Sungold Brix rating of 9.3, Sun Cherry Premium Brix 9.2 and Rosada Brix 10.5.

I don't think anything that you add to the soil would make the fruit any sweeter.

[DD.]

Epsom salts is for magnesium deficiency.

For a sweet, "normal" size tomato, I grow Scotland Yellow.

[Growster...]

It is really only the small cherry toms that are sweet, notably Sungold Brix rating of 9.3, Sun Cherry Premium Brix 9.2 and Rosada Brix 10.5.

I don't think anything that you add to the soil would make the fruit any sweeter.

I'm convinced that toms grown outside, in normal manured soil, have more flavour than those grown inside.

I like to think that the microscopic elements contained in the soil make up the complexity of the flavour, whereas a growbag or a large pot, even well fed and watered has none of this. We do both!

However, I agree with Mum that those Sun 'varieties' are particularly sweet whether grown inside or outside, but I haven't tried DD's Scotland Yellow yet!

[victoria park]

Sungold is the sweetest I've grown with the greenhouse border ones the sweetest. Almost too sweet, and am reducing their numbers next year. After June I stop pinching them and let them do their thing. They're still flowering and producing now. They also seem to be pretty resilient to diseases too inside.

[solway cropper]

I agree that the yellow ones seem to be sweeter. My crop of golden sunrise this year have been the sweetest ever and this I put down to using a good proportion of topsoil in the potting mix.

[lettice]

Would agree with others and one I grow each year is Golden Sunrise. Great cropper and very sweet.
Also grow the Sweet 'n' Neat Cherry in both red and yellow. Another good cropper and sweet.

[Pescador]

Sungold is my favourite. I grow it "wild" on the allotment, no training just let it roam. The yield is amazing!
And the taste is marvellous!!

[Dr_Pepper]

One thing that has a big effect on flavour is the concentration of dissolved nutrients in the soil. So basically a drier soil will tend to give more concentrated flavours. This is the same with a lot of aromatic compounds in other plants.

In commercial setups, a grower who is growing a tomato for it's flavour rather than just outright yield will monitor the EC (electrical conductivity) of the nutrient solution around the roots to keep it high enough to give good flavour. If you get British tomatoes of the smaller varieties in the supermarket (say Piccolo or Sunstream), it's guaranteed the better flavour comes from growing the crop in a state of minor stress to get better sugar and acidity.

In our tunnels at home we treat our tomatoes very mean - very sparse but regular watering (to avoid splitting) with a high-potassium organic feed and we de-leaf so we only have about a dozen leaves on each plant. Super Sweet 100 and Apricot Dream are producing the last of their very flavoursome fruit now. Orange Wellington was the sweetest of our large varieties this year.