This evening I decided to do another round of testing Brix levels of some of the tomatoes I have recently harvested. This evening held a few surprises for me! First, for those of you who dont know what a Brix level is, Ill explain. I squeeze out enough of the juice of a piece of fruit (tomatoes in my case) onto the plate of my refractometer, and then look through the eye piece to see the number associated with the reading. The number indicates the percentage of dissolved soluable matter within a juice. So a reading of 6.0 Brix means that 6.0% of the liquid is dissolved solids, usually sugars. So Brix is a good (but not perfect) indicator of the sugar levels within tomatoes and other fruits. Vintners use this to determine when grapes are at their peak for picking to make wine. I used three tomatoes for each variety I tested to insure accurate readings. Ill share the highest reading for each, as it is not so much an average that matters, but more about what the Brix is for a tomato variety at its peak. Here are the readings: Grande Galapagos 7.0 Peace Seeds Galapagos 8.0 Golden Currant 8.5 Sweet Pea Currant 7.0 Cuidad Victoria 6.5 Rimac 10.0 Reference: Whole Foods organic tomato 3.0 (bland) The highest Brix reading that Ive heard about is 12.0. A reading of 10.0 is awesome! But look at the size of my three Rimac tomatoes next to the quarter and the lighter. Rimac is a wild Peruvian tomato (S. Pimpinellifolium). I keep having tons of green ones appear, but very few red ones. Trust me, I know why! Theres not much I can do about it. The Grande Galapagos (a hybrid with the wild Galapagos tomato) has a tart bite to it. The Peace Seeds wild Galapagos (S. Cheesmaniae) is a true wild variety from the Galapagos Islands, and the three tomatoes did not have any tart bite to them at all. What I found amazing is that the texture of the two were very different. The hybrid is much more juicy than the authentic wild one. In fact, the Peace Seeds Galapagos was almost a dry tomato, even though those plants get the same amount of water as all of the others. It was very sweet and delicious. It is also supposed to be highly nutritious. The Rimac is also interesting. My first 10 tomato! I was worried that they were too small to provide enough juice, but they did. Of course, after saving the seeds, there was nothing left of the three! I find it hilarious how such a large, sprawling plant like my Rimac plants can produce such tiny fruits.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 06:49:09 +0000
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