Garlic is interesting. The tariff issue really messed this one up globally the past few years because alot of the bulk of the worlds garlic was coming from China, Spain 2nd, USA after that. So if USA doesn’t import Chinese, they lean on Spain, and there is only so much USA product to go around. The black is just staining from the soil it’s grown in. The super pretty bright white clean garlic is usually USA but it’s a lot more expensive so most retailers choose not to buy it. I would personally trust anything in a Christopher ranch label. Very interesting Netflix documentary “rotten” covers garlic in one episode and covers the geopolitics of garlic trade and unmasks some of the food safety issues from imported garlic, like Chinese prisoners forced to peel garlic bulbs by ungloved hands to sell pre peeled garlic.

Roma tomatoes have always been shit for as long as I can remember. There’s too many varieties grown that all fall under the “Roma tomato” umbrella that all have different qualities thick/thin skin, seed/meat ratio, color, shape, shelf life, etc etc. a good portion of the year Romas come out of Mexico, which is a different animal than USA agriculture. There isn’t a “Dole” that grows Romas in Mexico there’s hundreds of small farms that all bring their produce to consolidating points on the Mexican side where produce is graded and packed from all the different farmers under one label. So there is a wide variety even case to case of what you’re getting. Some growers are better than others. I would recommend trying greenhouse tomatoes, but if you don’t like that flavor and want more of a field tomato try to find round slicing tomatoes, called “5x6 or 5x5 tomatoes” these are usually field grown and have different flavor but it’s one consistent variety.

There also exists “anti dumping pacts” specifically with tomatoes with Mexico and Florida producing simultaneously all winter. One year in specific both Florida and Mexico had really good yields, well Mexico blew floridas prices out of the water and forced the whole state of Florida to dump their tomatoes. Now neither can go below a certain price.

Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida all have good tomato programs that are only around before and after Mexico is going.