We just got too much rain and while I expected some tomatoes to crack I didn't expect the horrible disaster (will try to load a photo later) we got. Whole vines are a moldy mess with virtually all tomatoes cracked, rotting, with various black and white molds. It's pretty smelly !
No more BLTS with my hierlooms, no tomato jam this year, no green tomato pickles, no tomatoes that make it just to Thanksgiving.
Anybody else get this? My question is, except for picking all tomatoes if torrential rain is expected, what else can you do?
We don't really have room to set around one or two bushels of tomatoes, so I was wondering if you could just take drastic action before a major rain and cut the main stem of the plant. It would wilt, but it may prevent cracking and give you a few days to harvest all. Anybody ever try this?
Rain, cracked tomatoes, drastic action?
I've never had the problem but I think root pruning might work better to limit the water uptake and preserve your plant to keep going. You just go around the plant with a shovel severing some of the roots.
If your plants are showing mold and brown lesions, it sounds like you might have some of the awful blight which is for sure the end of it.
We have the same problem. Last week or so, we had 8" of rain in a 5-day period. My tomatoes look horrible, but I've picked off what I could salvage, and they're blooming again like crazy. Go figure!
I took the cracked ones and cut out the crack and a bit of the fruit surrounding it and ate them! LOL Not gonna let an otherwise good tomato go to waste!
Had another inch of rain overnight. Oh well.
twiggybuds - thanks for root pruning idea - I looked that up - Cornell site says to prune a foot from the trunk, 6-8 inches down (in reference to hastening ripening). It might be kinda hard to do to our caged tomatoes, but an excellent idea.
I gotta post a photo, but now my camera isn't working.
stephanieTX - We're getting temps in the 40s here this coming week ! - so no more blooms for us.
I have heard from several of my friends in the Azle / Weatherford area and they all are experiencing the same thing with their tomatoes and vines. It had to be the heavy amounts of rain.
We've dried out and have had some very warm temps today and yesterday. Everything is so green, but my tomatoes are icky looking under the top leaves. They're still producing like crazy, so I'm not too worried about it. We're expecting a "cool" front tomorrow. The lows will be in the upper 60s and highs in the low-mid 80s.
Found 3 babies on my Green Zebra mater plant last night!
I have been picking when they just start to yellow.. the cherries and grapes are ripening an ripping so fast that i expect to just pull a few plants out now and get the garlic in early.. like you, everything red, even almost red is splitting.. with two bushels, i don't know how you would ripen them although i have mine in 4 half full 5 gallon buckets out of the sun in my kitchen. the greener ones are on the bottom and i just pick through the buckets every other day. I am making sauce, so I just boil and bag them until I get enough to run through the mill.
I hope you get a reasonable harvest and had enough early plants out to get something into the freezer.
good luck
-joe-
Well, you can see the damage here. It was so sudden. It looks like we had a freeze, but we've been well above that. I'll try to find some green ones and hope they ripen up. There's lots of things to do with green toms too. Don't think I'll get too many though.
Looks like you got *late blight*. Not an expert here but I've seen a lot of pictures and it sure is quick acting and horrible.
I think it was early blight which I had under control 'till we got all that rain. These were Celebrity tomatoes. I wonder if they are just especially susceptible? They WERE great tomatoes for productivity, good looking, good processing.
If I'm right here's an informative article: http://www.nysipm.cornell.edu/publications/blight/ Pictures show the early stages before the plants turn black. A grey mold (fuzzy fungal spores) is usually sighted (scroll down a bit to see pictures of it in the following link): http://laptopgardener.com/?p=635
Picture of a crop hit by it: http://www.apsnet.org/education/LessonsPlantPath/LateBlight/text/fig29.htm
Lots of images here: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enCA176CA222&um=1&q=late+blight&sa=N&start=18&ndsp=18
It could be another blight or disease but the speed at which you stated your plants died makes me think it very well may be late blight that did them in.
It could be early blight too (wrote the above while you were replying). Out of curiosity though do any of your plants have a mass of gray spores ?
Lilypon - No, it's the brown spots with concentric rings of early blight. You can see the spots in the photo; (I can see the rings clearly under a magnifying glass.)
My camera cannot take close-ups - I aim through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars and can get a picture. Sorry this turned out a bit out of focus. Sometimes it works better.
Compost - I had the same exact problem with my tomatoes this year :( Thanks for bringing it up.
bre
Yes, I kept hearing that early blight was really bad In this area this year. Strangely, it devastated our tomatoes, but left the potatoes totally unscathed even though they were planted side by side.
Yup, too much rain here too. Next year I'm keeping clear plastic handy to cover them in case of too much rain. My bell peppers did squat too. Bad year for both.
Yeah, I sprayed for the blight & thought my tomatoes would be ok.. I got 2 good ones off the vine until the cracking & mold set in.. Way too much rain for the poor plants! My cucumbers & gourds also did horrible this year.. for some reason the poor plants died before they could ripen the fruits ;(
The only things that did well was my asparagus & herbs.
Well, theres always next year!
looks like leaf spot or early blight.. the tomato forum is the place to get a quick and accurate diagnosis.. the pic came out great.. good idea with the binoculars, i only have my cellphone camera and will have to try that.
-joe-