16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Wertach, that's so cool! ...same thing happened to me--the heat (and me not paying attention) killed all my tomato plants, or so I thought. I yanked a couple plants out of the ground, poked around in the dirt and then left a couple of others for dead. A few days later-WTH? there was a sprout or two. Odd. I took the "deadest' plants out of the beds, put some greengro fertilizer (diluted a lot) on them, and now I've got tomatoes again. I had a bougainvillea plant do the same thing this spring.
Jimmy, below I linked to a Google Search about why tomato cores appear. Sometimes it's a trait of a particular variety, but most of the time it's due to weather and stresses as you'll see when you read those first links in the Google search.
Hybrid or OP it makes no difference as to the factors that can induce hard cores, so I'm not sure why only your CP is showing them.
I've grown Cherokee Purple many times and was one of the first to receive seeds since they were sent to me by Craig LeHoullier in Raleigh and he received the seeds from John Green in TN and it was Craig, whom I've know for about 23 years now, who named it.
I hope the Google links will give you a better idea of what can cause cores to form, but I will say that I've never seen cores with CP nor Indian Stripe, a version of CP, since about 1992 for CP and maybe about 2003 for IS.
Carolyn
Here is a link that might be useful: Google Search; hard tomato cores
Kidding? No, it's the truth. I searched and searched for the reason that my plant leaves were dying, ruling out various causes and this solution worked. I can't be the only gardener that has flies depositing eggs on their leaves, so if my post can help just 1 other person out there I can handle the ridicule.
As for the smell, yeah well there's trade-offs for everything in life. The traps are outside away from my windows and quite frankly I hardly notice unless I'm right next to it. Also, the site of all those dead flies and my green tomato plant leaves makes the odor bearable. BTW, my toilets don't run on electricity so I can't vouch for that smell. Do they have electric toilets in MO? Home Depot also sells toilets.(smile)
If the traps work for you, that is great but people should know that they stink before they buy.
I have a well. The pump uses electricity. Buckets of water work to flush the toilet in summer outages.
My fly trap was knock you over stinky and you could smell it for a distance. If I lived in town I wouldn't use one. Don't put them down low because my dog chewed a hole in the first one I got (nothing new) but the stink was attractive to him. I got them for flies that were in the barn.
I think you should catch one of your flies and have it identified. Some of the flies in my garden are Trachinid. They looked like house flies to me before I saw one biting a big hornworm. I am not sure the good flies would be attracted to the stinky trap because some of the good ones like nectar.
Here is a link that might be useful: flies
What you are likely seeing is due to thin skin and the expanding fruits readily crack the skin. Calcium will help in producing stronger skin on the fruit. This may be beyond what you might want to do but today I sprayed my greenhouse tomatoes with a Nutri-Cal formulation to help prevent that sort of occurance. Some varieties are more prone to cracking but Vintage Wine is such a beautiful tomato to give up on without a little extra effort.
Those were the 2 worst specimens of the year that I posted photos of to see what was wrong. They weren't all that bad, but there was enough cracking on enough of the tomatoes that I have given them up. The parts that were fine were lovely, and I could use them myself, but I give lots of tomatoes away and people are wary of tomatoes that look like that. I figured, if it was going to be a chronic problem, I could find other varieties that grew better for me and tasted good as well.
You can try picking them with a blush of color and letting them ripen inside ... it helps a little, if not a lot ... I wish reviews on this tomato would mention cracking as a problem, I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong as none of my other tomatoes were affected ... until I came here to ask :)
Right you are. Right after having my garden deep plowed in April, my brother in law came by and saw the deep red ruts and made an uncomplimentary comment about my soil. I said "check back in July". It holds water but right now I have egg plants and California Wonder plants producing like crazy. Tomatoes are just starting to slow down except for a few I started late from suckers.
My wild guess is that you have a better mix in the containers than your garden soil. I went to raised beds this year and am getting way better plants with the better soil.
I don't have much luck with container.
Every year seems different and no body ever knows why.
Hey, whatever works! Agree the mix is probably good. I have to grow in containers due to my high water table. Larger pots are better, but I use only 5 gal buckets and my Brandywine Suddeth's was in a 10 gallon container this year. I'm buried in tomatoes and my brandywine has produced over 20 1 pound+ tomatoes, and like you, is working on a second flush with the cooler temps. I'm doing whatever I can to get the second crop to ripen.....have trimmed the plant back to focus the energy.
Sorry to hear about others problems. I too am having a bumper harvest. We have just processed and canned 120lbs of tomatoes in the last week, (getting tired of it actually) and still have lots more to come. We had drought this year as well, but I watered well. I'm lucky in that I have very sandy soil that drains well and have no problems with cracking or BER and such. I planted most of them in virgin beds this year that I started to prep last year, and those ones are really healthy and productive.
I have tried bringing them in early, when they first turn, but mine have already cracked at the top before they even start to turn. I usually have pretty good years, just something weird going on this year. I usually mulch really well, but this year I didn't and didn't have my watering system out, just hand watered every other day.
In the raised beds where I have mulch and water, the tomatoes have been better, haven't cracked quite as much. But I still have a lot of the uneven ripening issues in those beds.