Odd Flavor

[kez717]

I'm new to growing tomato plants, just started my first ones earlier this year. I love them cooked, but never much tasted them raw so I apologize if this is a normal thing. I bought several different varieties in May and June to try them out, all are growing great and most have fruit ripening currently. My two cherry ones turned out to have radically different fruit then the labels indicated, they were supposed to be near the same size. Instead one has a ton of penny sized fruit and the other about half a dozen ping pong ball sized ones. The first few fruit from both were very bitter and bland, already fixed that by adding a little wood ash and cutting back on watering so now even the tiny ones have about as much flavor as store bought beefsteaks. My concern or problem is that both of the tomatoes have an odd flavor under the obvious tomato one. They taste a fair bit like raw pumpkin smells. Its not really a bad taste, but it is really distracting from what would otherwise be a near perfect tomato flavor if I can also get them just a little bit sweeter.

Now that the back story or situation is laid out, is it typically for different tomato types to taste kinda like raw pumpkin smells? Even smelling the cut tomatoes reminds me more of starting a jack-o-lantern then of a tomato. I am picking them when fully ripe so they are a nice red and slightly soft but not squishy. So the flavor shouldn't be from being over or under ripe.

[applestar]

There is a HUGE range of flavors, sweetness, tart/tanginess, and textures/mouthfeel in different variety tomatoes available out there. Color, size, shape, the whole works.

That said, if you are having problems with stinkbugs, stinkbug stink to me has a distinctly cucumber-y smell and they LOVE tomatoes.

Also, tomato foliage has a distinct odor (they're talking about that in this thread https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38414 ) and they leave your hand stained when you touch them so it may have transferred to the fruits when you picked them.

[kez717]

I realize there is a big range of different varieties, in addition to my 2 cherries I've got brandy wine, beefsteak, pineapple, and one that's supposed to be golden yellow when ripe. I've just never heard of any cherry tomato that has a distinctive pumpkin smell and flavor. I know the the foliage has its own smell as well, but it is defiantly no where near the tomato's smell. My sister actually pointed out that the foliage has a liquorice type smell, or at least mine do. Also I'm only cutting them open after washing both the tomatoes and my hands in the kitchen. Only bugs that have been spotted anywhere near the tomatoes are a few spiders, but they are all over my garden. Probably lucky about that since beyond a mess of spiders (different species nearly every week) I've only had a single trail of ants and about 5 caterpillars that tried cocooning on a small broccoli in a different plot.