freckles on cherry tomatoes?
 

Hi all,

I've got some speckles, or freckles on my cherry tomatoes, a few tiny spots on an Early Girl -- we've had more than usual rain, storms, and high heat here in SW Ohio. The tomatoes taste okay, haven't really started ripening much yet, got some yellow shoulders & cracking. Tough season seems like. A little EB, not too much and I've trimmed it off as I see it. (At least it looked like EB and I always fight it, so probably what it was on leaves.)
Any idea what these specks are on the cherry tomatoes? I picked the Early Girl early as it had cracked & figured critters would get into it.
Thanks for any ideas! [IMG]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ifoItci6lZ0MPvOL8C7Fih4n4vk3hxHZ/view?usp=sharing[/IMG]
[url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1id8o4EOel4Aui7ihot_r_VuBSOYTg98P/view?usp=sharing[/url]
[url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ibrk_Q8qEmJh_NCaLbzTh8bjEAk2UV_o/view?usp=sharing[/url]
[url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iZ-4OCQ_FWVgu6txob_d75UhSHGHZFRq/view?usp=sharing[/url]
[url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iNmrXDPU7O9zo8P5W-ayu0XOKpMmVHZL/view?usp=sharing[/url]

Likely Anthracnose, a fungal pathogen. Creates small dark spots which are slightly sunken on ripening fruit. I don't see any puncture marks like insects would leave.

I looked at a lot of images online -- nothing really looks like my tomatoes, unless maybe it's very early in a disease developing.
The foliage, while not looking exactly happy, seems okay -- some leaf curling but we've had 90 degree weather. The larger tomatoes look okay and there's a lot of fruit, but it seems to be taking a really long time to ripen.
For what it's worth, I ate a few of the cherry tomatoes anyway, and for not being quite ripe, they taste very good! Look fine inside.
Looking with a magnifying glass, the spots don't seem to be sunken, and there's not a ring around the spots that I can see. . .

Some of those look like some sort of old bug bites. First one doesn't, not sure what that is. There is also a sort of 'weathering' that I see on some varieties, which causes very fine cracks on the skin that proceed to give a slight local rot, I've seen this mostly on paste tomatoes, it's not something that seems commonly mentioned.

Other than not being pretty, I'm inclined to think it's a non issue, though I'm curious. The foliage on the cherry tomato (Sweet Million I think) looks the best of all the tomatoes, pretty unbothered by the weather. Lots of new growth and lots of fruit, most with freckles. I didn't stop to see if the green fruit has them as well.

RayR, totally off topic, but I see you're from western NY -- I'm from Little Valley, near Salamanca, before moving to Ohio. We're camping in Allegheny State Park next week!