fruit cooked on the vine?

[Dangit]

Hi ,
This will sound weird but I'm not kidding.

I think my tomatoes were cooked a bit right on the vine. Last week the temperature got up to 115 degrees on Friday, and 112 on Saturday. Knowing this was coming, I watered everything well and had 30% shade cloth over all the plants.

The plants themselves came through it just fine. No wilting at all. The tomatoes, however, didn't all come out the same. Many of them in various stages of ripeness got a bit soft to the touch. They remain soft and taste like they were lightly cooked. It's hard to explain, they taste good, but not exactly like fresh raw.

I'm pretty sure this is all from the heat alone. So are they cooked? Are they trash?

This was my best year ever for healthy plants and a great crop, and now this. Luckily there are plenty of fruit that escaped damage some how.

Thanks for reading this,

Dangit

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Dangit

Hi ,
This will sound weird but I'm not kidding.

I think my tomatoes were cooked a bit right on the vine. Last week the temperature got up to 115 degrees on Friday, and 112 on Saturday. Knowing this was coming, I watered everything well and had 30% shade cloth over all the plants.

The plants themselves came through it just fine. No wilting at all. The tomatoes, however, didn't all come out the same. Many of them in various stages of ripeness got a bit soft to the touch. They remain soft and taste like they were lightly cooked. It's hard to explain, they taste good, but not exactly like fresh raw.

I'm pretty sure this is all from the heat alone. So are they cooked? Are they trash?

This was my best year ever for healthy plants and a great crop, and now this. Luckily there are plenty of fruit that escaped damage some how.

Thanks for reading this,

Dangit

I think what has caused it is what's called Sour Rot.

http://www.seminis-us.com/resources/...es/fruit-rots/

Eventually the tomato fruit looks like a bag of liquid.

I cannot explain why some fruits escaped it as you wrote.

So simply right now a suggestion.

Carolyn

[Dangit]

WOW,
That stuff sounds nasty.

I'm hoping that is not the case.
So far; no fungal growth, no cracks, no sour smell no sign of any rot.

They just went soft all at once (the ones effected), and they TASTE like they were lightly cooked. They are not mushy soft, you can still slice them and the skins will sort of slide off. I was thinking of making some pasta with them, but now I'll hold off til I can figure this out.

Thanks for the info,

Dangit

[EarlyBird]

Dangit,

At least you had the organization and forethought to shade your plants before that brutal heat hit!

Down here in the LA Basin it got to near 110, and I didn't shade the plants until days after it started. Adding to the problem, I have a wilting virus which has required me to cut a lot of the canopy, thereby exposing the toms and reducing them to blistering, white, sun-scalded trash.

And like you, I was having a great season (but for the virus) thus far. Oh well. Still plenty of summer ahead. Grow on!

[eyegrotom]

Hi Dangit I had the same problem with my toms Here in Fontana it was 119 on Friday and 111 on Saturday I had to toss out 2 - 5 gallon buckets of tomatoes they were soft and mushy sort of like a half filled water balloon. 1 plant Hillbilly i pulled off over 25 toms. I also lost 8 young plants that were about 1 ft tall. Yes I do have 60% shade cloth over my garden. It also was my best year out of the past 5 or 6 years. Mike

[Dangit]

Hey guys,

Really good to hear from some local growers. Here in Simi Valley it was brutally hot for a few days. I've never seen anything like it, and I've lived in So Cal all my life. I won't be surprised if this is the new normal.

I have thought that 30% shade worked well here, but perhaps I need to go a bit darker. Eyegrotom, that 60% seems a bit much to me, (no expert) but I know it gets a tad more extreme out in Funtuna than here in Simi Valley. ( I've lived in Redlands and Riverside )

Earlybird, I feel your pain.It's a drag to just toss out the results of all that effort and attention.

I'm thinking it wasn't the sun that got them, but just the ambient temperature. It seems that they just roasted on the vine. I've never heard of such a thing, but that is how it seems.

Dangit

[zipcode]

Yes, happened to me too, when it got to 40C two years ago (on the balcony it's much hotter). I had some that were covered in alufoil against the angry birds (it was really dry and the birds went insane), and they were fine but others were slightly dehydrated and seemed cooked.

[b54red]

It has happened to me many time over the years when the temps get way too high. I have picked at least a dozen in the past week or two with the same condition and it isn't sour rot which causes them to rot. Like yours some of them are just kind of soft and squishy feeling like they have been slightly cooked but they don't rot nor do they taste bad but neither do they have that super fresh tomato flavor. Sometimes this happens to fruit that are only half ripe yet once picked and left on the counter they continue to ripen normally but remain somewhat soft. I usually use them in salads of cook with them since they are usually not too good for slicing on sandwiches as they are a bit mushy and drippy.

Bill

[Salsacharley]

My climate is hot and dry virtually all season. With temps 90 - 100F and 15 - 20% humidity, and 6,000 ft elevation the radiation from the sun is very intense. I use 70% shade cloth and I don't think a lesser percent would be as beneficial. Having said that, I'm going this whole year without shade cloth (so I say now) to see how things go. So far we haven't exceeded 105° and we are in the monsoons now. With low humidity and high temps the plants transpire very heavily, and BER and small fruit size often result. Now that you mention fruit being partially cooked on the vine, I think that's what happens to a lot of my cherry toms because when you munch on them in the tomato patch they taste half roasted.

[nbardo]

If ambient air temps are 115 the temp of the fruits will be higher from the sun... more like 125+. Is it the same thing everywhere on the vine or is there a difference between the lower fruits and the higher ones?

Either way, getting up into that 125+ range the fruits are close to temps used for sous-vide cooking. Multiple afternoons at these temps adds up. Long enough for some of those chemical reactions that happen during cooking to take place. Not only are they vine ripened, they are vine cooked! You could start a new culinary trend. 😊


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[Dangit]

B54red- you described it exactly. In the future I will consider cooking with them since the process is already started. It's too late for this last batch which has been tossed out.

Sous-vide on the vine.....a new culinary trend will bring new meaning to 'hot house' tomatoes.

Thanks for all the replies,

Dangit

[eyegrotom]

Hi nbardo For me it didn't matter if they were on the top or the bottom it cooked all of them. The only thing is that I have 4 plants in a 8 ft long raised bed, the first and third plant were affected but not the other 2. The next bed it was like the third and fourth one. Mike

[peebee]

Just a few of my toms got sun scald, but all of my cucumbers got cooked. They turned rubbery. I forgot to shade them the first hot day of the heat wave, so when I got home the smaller plants all died. They are now all under an old bed sheet spread across the top of the wire supports/trellises. Yeah so now I really have a sheet over the bed.

[Nan_PA_6b]

Test-plant some seeds to check germination. If they're viable, you can use the tomatoes for seeds. Got lots of seeds? send them to the MMMM swap.
Nan