What's wrong with my tomatoes?

[lukeout007]

I've been growing heirloom tomatoes. I've gotten a few good ones out of my plant but last night I went to go pick some and found that several of them looked like this:

Can anyone tell me why they are splitting and gooey like that?

 

[zigs]

Welcome to Gardening Forums

Usually caused by a sudden watering after a dry spell, fruit grows too quick for the skins.

 

[lukeout007]

I see. So watering needs to be more regular then?

 

[zigs]

It will help, a good soak and a mulch to stop evaporation. Same thing happens to tree fruit like plums.

You can still eat them, just use the split ones first.

 

[Kansas Terri]

Yes, backyard tomatos often split because of irregular watering: I tossed away a couple just this morning. I can control how much water I give them but I cannot control the rain and we have gotten quite a bit of rain this week! Though, honestly, I get a few split tomatos anyways.

If the tomatos look like the upper tomato I eat them anyways: the brown line on the skin does no harm. If the tomato has split badly enough to have a hole into the seed area I toss it aside and choose a better tomato instead.

Commercial growers use varieties that have tougher skins, and so they are far less likely to split. Backyard gardeners prefer not to grow those commercial varieties: gardeners choose other varieties to grow because those tougher-skinned commercial varieties will give us those crunchy, tasteless supermarket tomatos.

 

[TheCrazyPlantLady]

hmm, I did not know this.

 

[lukeout007]

Yeah this is definitely new information for me. Thank you everybody!

 

[ChanellG]

i would just be happy to see tomatoes at this point. I've battled the worms and won, but the plant only produced two tiny green fruit before the summer heat set in. Now I am just trying to keep the plants alive in hopes to get some fruit before the plants have to be removed over the winter. I do have a baby volunteer plant that came up in the compost, though. Can't wait to see what variety it produces.

 

[dconklin]

i would just be happy to see tomatoes at this point. I've battled the worms and won, but the plant only produced two tiny green fruit before the summer heat set in. Now I am just trying to keep the plants alive in hopes to get some fruit before the plants have to be removed over the winter. I do have a baby volunteer plant that came up in the compost, though. Can't wait to see what variety it produces.

None of mine have ripened on the plants either, but I do have a bunch of green ones now. My mom lives 20 minutes away and has had a lot of ripe ones on her plants. I mean she has been giving them away because she has had so many! But then again mine took quite a while just to flower this year with the weather.

 

[ChanellG]

None of mine have ripened on the plants either, but I do have a bunch of green ones now. My mom lives 20 minutes away and has had a lot of ripe ones on her plants. I mean she has been giving them away because she has had so many! But then again mine took quite a while just to flower this year with the weather.

My mom halfway lives across town; she planted her tomatoes early enough to get spring fruit, but she had to battle the hornworms to harvest any. Hers stayed green for a long time and she started bringing them indoors to ripen. My grandfather's tomatoes were planted late by my father and aunt. The suckers weren't being pruned, the location wasn't the best, they weren't trained on anything... I tried to stay out of it, but it's like walking past unsightly weeds in your flower bed every day and not stopping to pull them (can't do it).

 

[headfullofbees]

I'm picking a few tomatoes at my holiday home in Scotland.

 

[dconklin]

My mom halfway lives across town; she planted her tomatoes early enough to get spring fruit, but she had to battle the hornworms to harvest any. Hers stayed green for a long time and she started bringing them indoors to ripen. My grandfather's tomatoes were planted late by my father and aunt. The suckers weren't being pruned, the location wasn't the best, they weren't trained on anything... I tried to stay out of it, but it's like walking past unsightly weeds in your flower bed every day and not stopping to pull them (can't do it).

Maybe I should start bringing some of them inside to ripen. Funny how my Mom's are getting nice and ripe on her plants and that she has a ton of them and I am not getting any ripe ones on mine.

I have had one big tomato that should have been red by now but yet hasn't even started. Actually it probably (in theory) should have been ripe a couple weeks ago!

 

[KimmyMarkks]

I've had the same thing happen to a couple of my tomatoes. I just cut around the bad parts instead of having to throw away the whole tomato (unless the whole tomato looks bad). Unfortunately you can't control much of this.
I never knew it was due to irregular watering. I just always thought that some veggies and fruits don't turn out as good as others.