I have been growing tomatoes under cool conditions for nearly 40 yeatrs and
this is an on going problem. The books say and I agree, that too much water
is the problem-out of doors, late in the season, especially with cherry
tomatoes and Sugar plum the issue may be too little transpiration-balance
between water in /out.
Irregular watering causes the ends of the fruit to go black and corky-the
rest of the tomato is still edible.
Transpiration problems would be overcome in a heated greenhouse- but that is
going commercial.
Late in the season I pick the tomatoes earlier when they have turned colour
but before they have reddened up completely. They still taste better than
shop fruit.

"Mark" wrote in message
...
On 16 Sep 2005 12:19:40 -0700, wrote:

This has been my first proper year of growing tomatoes, and all things
considered, I'm very pleased with the results, given too much rain, and
not enough sunshine. All my plants seem to be producing fair
quantities without me doing much apart from supporting and trimming
them. Though I have noticed that if you leave the fruit on the plant
too long, the skins seem to split, which doesn't seem a good thing.
On the other hand, the longer you leave the fruit, the riper and
sweeter and tomatoier (if there such a word) they get. There must be
some recognised way of dealing with this dilemma.



Ken Cohen

Generally, splitting is caused by irregular water supply, so if you
grow in growbags and water evenly, you *should* get away with it. But
in the soil, in recent weather hot/flood/hot/flood etc it always seems
to be a problem.

Depends on variety too - I gave up trying to grow cherry tomatos like
'Gardeners Delight' in the soil for this reason, but they (and their
successor varieties) are fine in growbags.

(BTW - question for anyone- can you still get Gardener's Delight, or
are they totally withdrawn now?)

Regards, Mark