This is a public-interest archive. Personal data is pseudonymized and retained under GDPR Article 89.

Re: boiled tomatoes

neale <nfoster@jsr.cc.va.us> wrote:

> I am having trouble with my tomatoes.  I have early girl and beefsteak that
> turn a nice red but are still hard and greenish yellow inside.  If I leave
> them on the vine, they either start to rot or they begin to "boil".  We are
> having a heat wave here in VA, and some of the tomatoes seem to be boiled
> in their skins.  Is this possibly what is happening?  The only tomatoes
> that are doing well are the Gurnsey Island tomatoes that Doreen Howard sent
> me. (Thanks)  But even these will end up looking boiled sometimes. When I
> say "boiled" I don't mean rotten - the "boiled" part is darker and mushy,
> almost liquid without smelling rotten.

> And if they are being boiled, what can I do about them?

> Any suggestions would be appreciated.

> Neale (zone 7)

Hi Neale,

It sounds like they're being scalded by the sun.  I'm assuming that you're
in a heat wave right now?  The sun is so intense that it literally cooks
exposed parts of the fruit, leaving areas of dead tissue that of course
eventually rot.  They don't smell at first, but there are dead spots that
begin to darken as the cells decompose.  For some reason it's been said
that green fruit is more susceptable (probably because the ripe ones are
picked already! ;-), but I've seen plenty of sun scalded near-ripe fruit
over the years.

If you can protect the most exposed fruit with some sort of shade until
it cools off some you might prevent more fruit from getting scalded.

If you're pruning your indeterminate vines it's not a bad idea to let
your plants go a bit on the leafy side.  Rather that pruning out suckers
right to the nubbins I let two leaves grow first - this gives the plant
a bit more solar collector surface and provides a bit more shade for the
fruit.

Why are they ripe looking on the outside and hard in the center?  Beats
me, I haven't experienced this myself and haven't seen any references
to it.  A couple guesses: 1) the heat is causing the outside to ripen too
fast 2) the heat is interfering with the fruits normal development.

Cheers!

--
 Bob Carter  -  bcarter at wkpowerlink dot com
 Kootenay Bay, BC, Canada  -  Zone 6b
--

I'm an absolute, off-the-wall fanatical moderate.

--
To unsubscribe, send a message to: majordomo@lists.umsl.edu
with the single body line: unsubscribe sqft
Contact owner-sqft@lists.umsl.edu with any admin questions.
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index