"if I "water stress" a plant to make the tomatoes sweeter"

Could you explain the basis for that assumption - that it somehow makes them sweeter? And exactly what do you mean by "water stress"? It isn't a term normally used in growing tomatoes so open to confusion and misunderstanding.

I assume you mean withholding water from the plants but if so then "I tried watering lightly and waiting a day to water again" makes it sound as if you are watering the plants daily, correct? If so, why? Are they in such small containers so would require daily watering?

As for leaf removal it depends on what damages them. Diseased leaves, yes. Leaves just suffereing some environmental damage don't really need to be removed.

Dave

Hi digdirt! I revised the post for your questions. The revision isn't showing up yet, I guess it will take a while.

Ugh it didn't save. Anyway "water stress" is when you don't water your tomatoes until they are starting to wilt. This makes the fruit sweeter because the tomatoes will concentrate sugar into the existing tomatoes. Unfortunately it does cause blossom drop. I tried to give them a small amount of water so that the tomatoes don't suddenly grow too fast. I water them every other day.

Also, leaves damaged by caterpillars.

"This makes the fruit sweeter because the tomatoes will concentrate sugar into the existing tomatoes"

Can't help with your questions then as I would have to strongly disagree with that claim, that basic underlying assumption. At least to the degree that sugar concentration can somehow be controlled by something as simple as an artificially imposed watering schedule. It certainly isn't a commonly held belief but rather sounds like one of those theories that just don't hold up in actual practice.

Certainly one wants to avoid excessively watering tomato plants and risking diluting the flavor with water while the fruit is ripening. Which is why watering as often as every other day is not commonly recommended.

But brix, the measure of sweetness, development is primarily, tho not exclusively, genetic. Your assumption above would totally discount all those other factors involved in brix development in the fruit including genetics. That's why the same fruit variety, grown in different soils, tests out at approximately the same brix level. The difference is minuscule. Not to mention the effect such an approach would have on over all plant health, root development, nutrient absorption, and production.

Good luck with your methods.

Dave

I water them every other day because then the soil would be too dry if I don't. Also there have been research on the water stress and taste tests confirm the more water stressed plants' fruit are sweeter.

You'll have to find some varieties which are more resistant to ber, that's about it. Letting them wilt will slow calcium transport through the plant so you can't expect anything else. I think the method will be most successful if you do it all the time after the fruit forms, not just at ripening. Or find another stressing alternative that doesn't lead to wilting.

The problem is that taste is purely subjective, differs with everyone and cannot be measured or quantified. What tastes sweet to one person would taste sour or bitter or flat to another with different taste buds.

But brix levels, the actual sugar content of the fruit can be scientifically measured and documented.

Dave

You're right about that, fungus. I'm not giving up brandywine though :)

What you say is true, digdirt, but we all have the same taste buds which can identify sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, and the last strange one I can't remember, but unless your buds are damaged or some other factor like hormones, that's more about preference. A lollipop made of sugar and no flavorings wouldn't taste bitter to anyone, just not sweet enough or too sweet.

It's in a study that doesn't just make use of taste test but actual laboratory tests as well.

https://www.growingformarket.com/articles/Improve-tomato-flavor

"Taste panels preferred the fruit grown in the 0, 25, and 50 percent plots, and laboratory analysis confirmed that the stressed tomatoes were higher in sugars, soluble solids, and lycopene. Ripe fruit color was good in all treatments, and skin toughness was reported only in well-watered fruits."

And if you think I'm justifying myself, well I am. I do believe water stressed tomatoes will taste better, as I experienced myself when one year I watered my toms daily, happy to see the toms grow bigger and faster than the last year and found there was a lack of flavor and sweetness compared to the year before and wondered why. Shame because I had so many plants and they were considered the best in flavor (black krim, black cherry, black plum, Cherokee purple).

For sweetness I think sun is the most important, but I guess that's not something you can control. Interesting that that study found the skins tougher in well watered plants, I totally would expect it to be the other way around.

Well, the UV index has been remarkably high, this summer, throughout most of the USA and a good part of the world. At least, it was in July (it might be still, but I haven't checked). So, you're likely to have some extra nutrients in your tomatoes, this year, anyway (I'm not sure which nutrients, however). UV rays can cause plant stress, and this particular type of stress is said to increase certain nutrients and/or chemicals in the fruits. One example is capcaisin in hot peppers. Stressing chiles generally is supposed to increase the capsaicin, although I can't say I've noticed a big difference there myself, lately, except with late season cold stress on Tabasco peppers last year (mine were almost as hot as a Carolina Reaper to my tongue, and I'd say more painful in the mouth and much less painful in the stomach). That's interesting that you're trying to apply the same principle with tomatoes and brix. You might try dry farming, but I get the feeling you might be using containers (and dry farming isn't a good idea there, unless maybe you've never watered them since they sprouted, and they weren't transplants; direct-seeded plants that were only watered until they sprouted can resist drought a lot better than ones that have ever been watered afterward, in at least some cases, although you might not get a big harvest, still; it's kind of magical how they can survive without water and grow for so long, and kind of anticlimactic how they can ask for more water again two days later the moment you do water them; if you try it, use at least a 10-18 gallon container, and maybe don't use potting soil—or else don't use a container; don't attempt to transplant such a plant without transitioning to watering it first).

Anyway, I think brix has more to do with sunlight, variety and microbes than plant stress, but feel free to report your results, as it's interesting (although I've harvested fruits from pest or nutrient stressed tomatoes a number of times, with similar results in flavor as ones that weren't obviously stressed like that). I think minerals and fertilizer can play a role, too, personally. Soil composition may influence which microbes can flourish. If you kill the microbes with nitrates or such, you probably won't get the same benefit. If they do study the effect of different soils on brix, IMO, they should do it without factors that can impact the results of the study, such as application of nitrate fertilizer and copper during the growing season, both of which can kill microbes (although copper might kill microbes you'd want to kill). I've heard that urea can kill soil microbes, too, but I'm not convinced about that one, just yet, as both it and ammonium fertilizers would seem to encourage microbes in their breakdown—but I could be wrong about urea.

Anyway, I have a friend with a refractometer who is all into increasing soil life, and he says that increases the brix a lot. I don't know if it's true, but he's convinced, and he sounds convincing.

As for why increased soil life increases brix if it does, I'm not sure. I do have an idea, however. It could be that the plants are aware of the increased microbes, and increase the sugar levels of the fruits as a defense mechanism against infection by them (sugar has antimicrobial properties in concentration). Or, it could be that microbes themselves encourage sugar formation, somehow. Maybe it's not enough sugar to kill some beneficial kinds that want it, and that don't rot the fruit.

Although I think you have a point about lollipops tasting sweet to just about anyone, I have a tomato that I'm breeding, which tastes very, very sweet to me, and it tastes rather sour to some others I had taste vertical slices of the very same fruit I tasted, which surprised me. I've never had anyone taste it that gets as much pleasure out of it as I do, oddly enough—it's kind of unsettling that they think such radically different things about such an awesome tasting tomato, but at least I don't feel guilty about eating them all myself (except at least one other person liked the F1's flavor more than I did, but I didn't think the F1 was any sweeter than usual for a tomato, while the F2 and F4 were exceptionally sweet; the F3 tasted great, but wasn't as sweet, although I still liked it more than others did). Tomatoes have a variety of flavors and constituents at once, and people may not perceive them the same way in combination as they would in isolation. Lollipops are designed to taste sweet to everyone. The same may not be true of at least my tomato. If you're really deprived of or over-exposed to a nutrient, it may taste different to you, too. Also, if you brush your teeth or bake cookies before eating a fresh tomato, that can make them taste different. I don't recommend that when tasting a new variety for the first time like I did, this year. The cookie smell made the tomatoes taste like baked spaghetti squash, and the tooth brushing made them taste bitter.

There's a chemical that can make sour things taste sweet, too (including lemons). I imagine its possible that some microbes might produce chemicals or enzymes that influence flavors, and such may account for differences in tomato taste between people. I know people who think other stuff (not tomatoes) is overpoweringly sweet that I don't think is that sweet, too (including desserts, etc.), while I might think some other sugary substance or dessert is far sweeter, and they disagree.

It's also possible that there are different kinds of sweet and some of us taste some of them more powerfully than other people do. Or, maybe we all taste sugar the same and the microbes in our mouths convert parts of various foods into extra sugar on the spot and some microbes are better at it with some foods, while others are better at doing it with other foods. Human genetics might influence the behavior of the microbes, which microbes prefer to go where or which are likely to prosper where, etc.

Super tasters are said to taste some tastes in a more pronounced fashion (like bitter flavors in spinach). I don't claim to be a super taster, but maybe I'm an unusual taster.

I'm pretty sure perceived tastes can be psychological, too.

It should also be noted that fruits that may not taste very sweet can have as high or a higher brix than other species of fruits or other kinds of food that taste very sweet. (Compare watermelon and pineapple with sweetcorn, and raspberries with squash, and blackberries with cucumbers/peas/grain.) Dried fruit may also have a considerably higher brix without actually tasting that much sweeter. I think other flavors can mask sweetness, at times, or the sweetness can be perceptible, but not obvious, because it doesn't taste like dessert.

Shule, plants don't defend themselves against the beneficial microbes. They benefit from them because the microbes decompose plant, animal, or other matter and make nutrients available for the plant. Sugar (glucose) is created by plants for energy. They pump their fruit full of them for god knows why, probably to make it appealing to animals who will take it from the plant and spread the seeds. When you feed plants sugar, it's not because the microbes feed on it, but because the plants take it up their roots and use it for quick energy.

Non beneficial microbes will cause them to use up too much energy fighting them and come out with poor fruit.

You have the wrong idea about the lollipop. The point of the lollipop is that sugar- pure sugar without addition- is sweet, and only sweet. It will never be sour (one of the types of taste buds I forgot), bitter, savory, or salty. Anyone who tastes pure sugar will only taste sweetness (to different degrees). Tomatoes are not just made of sugar. They are made of many molecules- which will make them bitter, sweet, sour, acidic, tart, god know what else, fertilizer will also affect flavor.

As I said before, there will be many factors to how someone tastes something- damaged buds, prominent buds, preference, age, disease (especially diabetes- I believe it's type II who cannot tell the difference between a glass of water with 1 tsp sugar and another glass with 1 tbsp), hormones (I know this one well, I craved sugar during PMS, on two occassions bit into chocolate and it tasted like mud, on one occassion mango ice pop and thought it was bitter, which confused my bf bc it was very sweet. later on I ate the same exact candy bar/pop and was surprised they were actually sweet, I mean I knew they should have, but I didn't know why they tasted bad the first time around), if they just ate something, acquired taste etc. but the amount of sugar in the tomato will always be the same.

Bitterness, sourness, tartness, etc, can also overpower the sweetness, so when it comes to brix, no matter how much sugar was in it, it may still not taste sweet. That's what happened when I made parfaits. The tanginess and sweetness of the cheesecake overpowered the sweetness of the chocolate cake.

As for your tomato, you probably focus on the sweetness while they focus on the other tastes. Since you have familiarity with that tomato, you would definitely enjoy it more than them, even if it was less sweet than usual. I loved grapefruits as a kid because they were sweet and slightly sour. I had my cousin try some, and she thought they were just sour. She couldn't taste the sweetness because the sourness bothered her too much.

Btw lemons aren't actually sour if you wait for them to ripen. Many people don't realize that they aren't ripe when they buy them.

Those fruits your named on your last post are always very sweet if you ask me. They're almost never not sweet.. Not always the strongest in flavor though. Flavor and sweetness aren't the same but they do affect each other. Sometimes I don't like eating watermelon because although it's sweet, it lacks much flavor.

My guess for why water stress works is because the fruit's sugars aren't diluted with lots of water. And since the fruits are smaller, the sugar is more concentrated. Also maybe because they create less fruit they have more sugar and nutrients to stuff into what they do have.

It sounds like you're looking to teach and not to learn.

I'm discussing with them what I know. Just because I have questions about some things doesn't mean I don't know about other things. The questions I asked above are the things I don't know about. Most of the discussions under the original post were off topic.