Grab the brolly and go outside and pick 'em now - at least the blushing ones!

Linda

One: You can make spaghetti sauce with the split ones.

Two: As already suggested, PICK THE EARLY, BLUSH COLOR STATE. Keep them on your kitchen counter(away from direct sun) until they become nice-n-red. According to the experts, tomato taste (harvested this way) will NOT suffer at all and in fact might be even tastier.

I spent 3 hours watering by hand on Sunday and now we're getting the heavy rain. Oh well, at least I didn't give the plants that much on Sun, since we'd had 1/4" on Sat and more was predicted. Just enough to keep them going since that 1/4" was all they'd had since last Tues when I watered.

We're back to getting all the month's rain in 1 week (or maybe 1 day!).

My tomatoes are still hard and green so I won't worry about splitting but I think I have some cukes I should pick during a lull today.

A quick stop in the garden before heading out to work this morning. Pulled two more blushing Black Krims, my first IDH and a stunted but blushing Super Steak which as it turns out had BER so I chucked it.

Are green tomatoes prone to cracking due to excessive watering/rain?

This post was edited by njitgrad on Tue, Jul 23, 13 at 8:30

I hope not. But I'd think that the closer they are to blushing (full-sized and shiny vs hard and dull) the more likely they would be to crack.

Raining buckets here now...

It has rained here every single day for the past month. Some days for 10 minutes, some days for 10 hours! I can't get to the tomatoes quickly enough! I am probably having 3 split for every one that doesn't. And that's not waiting until they are ripe to pick them. I don't want a drought, but really, I've had ENOUGH of the rain for a while!

I never really considered this but what is the scientific reason that causes tomatoes to split from excess watering? Your Average Joe would tend to think that lack of watering and intense heat would cause such an effect, not the opposite.

The skin starts toughening to retard water loss, then the sudden influx of a lot of rain swells the wet tissue beyond the ability of the skin to keep it contained.

Think of the skin as Bruce Banner's shirt, the fruit as him, and the rain make Hulk mad...