Bursting tomatoes are the bane of many gardeners, especially beginners. Find out how to remedy it and enjoy a beautiful harvest.
Do you have tomatoes in your garden? Great, there’s nothing like your own healthy crops. Unfortunately, it is quite common for ripening fruits to burst on the bush. This is not only not very aesthetically pleasing, but also increases the risk of the entry of various diseases. What external factors affect this?
Skilled gardeners have no doubts. The main cause of tomato cracking is irregular watering. Fluctuations in soil moisture are definitely not conducive to plant health. Therefore, when tending your vegetable garden, do not allow a water deficit. If tomatoes are not watered regularly, during heavy watering or after a rain, they will try to drink to spare, causing the fruit to swell heavily and the skin to crack. In a word, the key to success here is regularity, not abundance.
Although removing the tops of shoots from tomatoes is necessary, if there are too few leaves left, all the water will be absorbed by the fruit – and here again the tomato skin will crack. So what is correct tomato stunting based on? The idea is to leave enough leaves to allow the sun to reach the fruit, but not to leave only tomatoes on the bush. Gardeners suggest that 3 to 5 leaves should remain above each inflorescence.
Other causes of tomato cracking include excess nitrogen or low potassium content in the plant. Of course, temperature changes – and in particular the contrast between night and day – can also prove to be quite a problem. Late summer and autumn are particularly dangerous times in this regard.
Well, but what about when the tomatoes have already cracked? Are they fit for consumption, or are they already completely wasted? Here we have good news for you. Cracked tomatoes can boldly be eaten, simply remove the skin. This is the case with superficial cracks, while it is different with tomatoes that have cracked all the way to the flesh. These need to be eaten as soon as possible, before rot-causing microorganisms enter the fruit through the crack.
If you want to prevent tomato cracking, remember to water them regularly, take care of temperature regulation and do not remove too many leaves. Growing these vegetables gives a lot of joy and it is not worth giving up too soon!
main photo: unsplash.com/Josephine Baran
