I did not intend on growing tomatoes this year due to last years vermin and mildew/black spot/everything else problems I had with them. I read somewhere that when you had these kinds of problems (not the bug ones) , that you don't want to plant tomatoes in the same plots because the issues will come up again. I have two 4x4 plots. I didn't plant the tomatoes. It think it was the seeds of other tomatoes that had fallen last year--obviously heirloom I guess. So those finger-like projection, what are they? They get worse further down the stem.