Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Tomato plant variety that's resistant to splitting and good for eating?

Can anyone suggest a good tomato variety for our garden that has skin that is resistant to splitting and is sweet and good for eating? I am in zone 6 in Maryland.Tomato plant variety that's resistant to splitting and good for eating?
I planted Early Girls last year and didn't have any problem with splitting (even when it rained a bunch), they are tasty and fairly sweet.Tomato plant variety that's resistant to splitting and good for eating?
Check your soil, sounds like you need to add potassium. Excessive water tends to make them split, low potassium makes it worse.
We have always used better boy tomatoes. They can grow anywhere between the size of a golf ball and a baseball. They are delicious.
There are no tomatoes resistant to splitting, though some types do split more than others.





Splitting is always caused by uneven watering and over watering after a dry spell (i.e. you are not irrigating/watering your tomatoes regularly and after a 3 week dry spell you get a heavy rain that drops more than 1';). When this happens all fruit that have reached full size will split regardless if they are fully ripe or not.





The only option is to pick all full sized fruit before heavy rains. This is what I do in my market garden to keep splits down to a minimum. The full sized maters will ripen in a few days and be just as good as the vine ripened fruits (better because they will be perfect and not split). To ID full sized unripe fruit look on the bottom of the mater for a lighter colored star shape. If that is present, than the fruit is full sized and will ripen if picked green.





You can use split maters for sauce or tomato juice.





Towards the end of the season it is very hard to keep up with split maters as the plants are losing vigor and producing weaker and weaker fruit.
Go to www.burpee.com and they will have a lot of varieties to choose from with all the descriptions and zones for planting them.

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