Crack resistant varieties

[jimtown]

I grew heirlooms for the first time this year with mixed results. My biggest problem was cracking. I did discover a few varieties that were very resistant to cracking( Thessaloniki, Eva Purple Ball ). Unfortunately for me , I found several more that seemed to have no resistance at all. I plan to try Kosovo, Aunt Ginny's Purple, and Aker's West Virginia since I've read that they are pretty much crackproof. I would appreciate any suggestions as to other varieties that are good in this regard. Thanks.

[Fusion_power]

Most heirlooms crack. With that said, cracking is a trait that can be selected against fairly easily. The problem that comes with reduced cracking is that it usually involves thicker skin... and I hate thick skin on a tomato.

You can significantly reduce cracking by regulating water to the plants. Cracking is made much worse when the plants have been very dry for a few days and then get a good watering.

Burgess Crackproof is one that lives up to the name.

DarJones

[travis]

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=16402

Glamour still is available from Stokes. Glamour was developed from Burgess Crackproof x Sioux, is crack resistant, a bit heat tolerant with 75 DTM,
6 - 8 oz., red, market tomatoes.

[carolyn137]

It depends on where the splitting is occuring as I see it.

If there are concentric circles or radial splits at the stem area that's primarily genetic in nature, and the splits usually scar over, but if there's too much water those scars can reopen and the normal bacteria and fungi found in the environment can get in there and initiate a rotting process.

Splits elsewhere on fruits usually occurs when the fruits are at their maximum size and if there's too much rain or overirrigation then the matrue fruit can't expand and the uptake of water causes the fruits to split.

I don't know of even one variety that is completely split proof whether it be OP heirlooms or F1 hybrids although the latter aren't prone to the concentric and radial splitting at the stem end as are most OP's. There are always certain environmental issues that influence especially horizontal splitting so that a variety in one year appears to be split proof but the next year is not. It drives my commercial farmer friends who grow primarily F1 hybrids absolutely crazy.

[travis]

Good points well taken.

Carolyn,

If you are aware you are growing a variety prone to cracking, is there a way to determine when a tomato has achieved its maximum growth potential while still green? In some cases, it may be preferable to pick a tomato while green and allow it to ripen off the vine instead of leaving it on the vine to crack as it ripens. This would probably be the case for tomatoes intended for farmers markets and other commercial purposes.

Ted

[b54red]

I had no splitting with KBX last year while most others planted at the same time showed some splitting. Gary O' Sena was another that split very little.

[travis]

Ted, that is exactly what many commercial market tomato growers do, pick their crop green ripe (green wrap) when the tomatoes have reached their peak growth and developed sufficient sugar content.

[carolyn137]

Ted, as a fruit develops and gets near itsmature size the green of the fruit starts getting a lighter color tending towards a whitish green.

Here's a sequence showing that:

http://www.tomatosite.com/index.php?...Truss_Timeline

I have several commercial friends and none of them pick tomatoes when they're all green, and I don't either. Rather, they pick them at either breaker 1 or 2 stage, breaker 1 means a blush of color at the blossom end and breaker stage 2 means coloration about 1/4th to about 1/3 up the side of the fruits.

There are many who feel that totally green tomatoes ripen up so that the taste is the same as those that ripen up on the vine, but I'm not one of those who believe that based on my own tomato growing experiences.

[dice]

Coastal Pride Red from grunt has *extremely* tough skin.

Late ripening, productive, robust plant that had no disease
issues, mid-sized round red. (Since the ones that ripened
did so in late September and October after a cool summer
and mild, semi-rainy fall, I cannot comment on flavor.)

It was suggested by a neighbor that they might be good
for a blanch-skin-can method (the skin should come off
in one piece). I might be a little disappointed if I bought
something with skin that tough from a fresh-market stand.

(I have seeds if anyone wants any. Quite a large plant
for a determinate, more like a rangy semi-determinate.)

[jimtown]

First of all , I want to thank you all for your comments and not just on this topic. I've learned a lot since discovering your site about a year ago. I am interested in hearing your opinions on the best tasting/least prone to crack varieties. Also, Carolyn, are you saying that tomatoes picked at breaker 1 or 2 are as good or nearly as good as those allowed to ripen completely?

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by jimtown

First of all , I want to thank you all for your comments and not just on this topic. I've learned a lot since discovering your site about a year ago. I am interested in hearing your opinions on the best tasting/least prone to crack varieties. Also, Carolyn, are you saying that tomatoes picked at breaker 1 or 2 are as good or nearly as good as those allowed to ripen completely?

Yes, in my experience if picked at breaker 1 or 2 they do ripen up pretty close to what vine ripened ones do.

I was raised on a farm where we had acres and acres of tomatoes and no one who is commercial is going to hopefully let ALL the fruits ripen on the vine. To top off a basket of them being sold wholesale or even retail but you've got to have some partially ripe ones at the bottom that won't be crushed.

So at what stage a person harvests tomatoes is to me more of a function of what they do with the tomatoes as in just for home use, sell wholsale, sell retail, wherever, is what's important.

For many years starting in the 90's I sold to restaurants and at a large Farm stand which also had a restaurant.

The needs of the restaurants are based on how quickly they go thru what you deliver, how often you deliver and which varieties you and the chef have decided on.

[zipcode]

The only downside to picking when still partly green is that the tomatoes will get quite a bit softer than vine ripe (at the peak of ripeness). That's pretty much how it happens to me (since my garden is quit a while away from where I live, I can't be there that often to pick them).

When I was a kid (fourteen years old), I drove a truck to tomato farms and tomato wholesale houses. At the farms, I would buy the tomatoes in sixty pound crates as they were brought in from harvest unsorted. The farmers would harvest the tomatoes still attached to the plants. They would separate the tomatoes from the plants at the loading house. They were always green and hard as a rock. They ranged in size from 1" diameter to 4" or 5".

If I bought from a wholesaler, They were sorted by size and color. Large tomatoes with some color were the highest grade and cost a little more. The smaller rock hard, green tomatoes cost less per crate.

I would haul the tomatoes to a produce distributor where the sixty lb crates were stacked in a cooler to ripen.

We always "ran" the tomatoes over a canvas table and separated them. Large, Pink or ripe tomatoes were packed in 20 lb lugs and distributed to the restaurants and grocery stores. The remianing green tomatoes were sorted by size back into the crates for additional ripening in the coolers. The "running also allowed us to remove the rotton tomatoes which went into metal drums. A farmer raising hogs would pick up the rotten tomatoes, leave empty drums, and feed the rotten tomatoes to his hogs.

If the tomatoes in the cooler were ripening faster than they could be sold to restaurants and grocery stores, we would put them in small wicker baskets and sell them door to door by the basket. We actually made more profit selling them door to door than we made with commercial sales.

I've always wondered how the farmers knew when the optimum time was to harvest his crop.

I also could never tell any difference in a vine ripe tomato and a cooler ripened tomato.

Ted

[travis]

I agree with Carolyn regarding picking no earlier than what I would call half breaker to nearly red ripe. But what I was referring to earlier is that market growers are encouraged to pick when green ripe for "quality" and shipping concerns.

"Fresh market. Tomatoes harvested at the mature green stage make up the bulk of the commercial fresh market tomato crop because they tolerate rough handling better than the riper stages and hold the longest in storage, shipping, and on the supermarket shelf. In the industry, this is referred to as having a low shrinkage rate. North Carolina recommendations are to harvest green matures when about 10 percent of the fruit on the first hand is at the breaker stage of maturity. All fruit on the first two fruit hands are generally removed at this harvest. The second harvest normally takes place from 10 to 14 days after the first. Fruit 2¸ inches in diameter or larger are removed from the middle of the plant. At the third harvest, 10 to 14 days later , fruit are removed from the upper portion of the plant. Vines and fruit should be completely dry when mature green fruit are harvested. Otherwise, fruit shoulders may develop sunken, blackened areas during ripening. Vine-ripes must be hand harvested t horoughly and as frequently as every other day. Fruit which turn pink or red-ripe on the vine are unmarketable through commercial channels."
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/sustainable.../harv_tom.html

But for small market stands, tailgate vendors, farmers markets, etc., if it were me, I'd try to get them in an assorted condition between half breaker and ripe, and then maybe take a box of green ripes for people who want fried green tomatoes, with the thought that some of the unsold green ripes will be on hand and beginning to break pink if I ran out of full red tomatoes.