Too much water at once thwarting tomato crop

Q: We have grown tomatoes here in Albuquerque for 30 years. My favorite is a variety called Fantastic, and generally they put out a great crop. My question is, why do the tops of the tomatoes split regardless of the amount of water or whether they are grown in late afternoon sun? This year we have an abundance of fruit, but most have split and then they start to mold. — M.K., Albuquerque

A: Everything I’ve read about the malady you are experiencing with your tomatoes suggests uneven irrigation as the main culprit of the fruit cracking at the stem end of each fruit and then developing the mold.

I’m going to suggest that rather than water once, probably in the mornings, that you split the water to twice when you do water. Instead of giving the ground a good soaking when you do water, offer half the usual amount and then offer the other half perhaps twelve hours later. Water in the morning, then water again in the evening.

All of my reference materials teach that your goal is to keep the soil constantly moist. The split is caused by the plant whooshing up a lot of water all at once, filling its cell walls within the plant. As it uses all that water the cell walls shrink — for lack of a different way to think about it — and then the next time you offer the abundance of water a lot of the cell walls, having shrunk or fractured, can’t deal with the next woosh of water being offered, and those cells become the crack on the fruit eventually molding and making the fruit yucky.

I didn’t know this but have learned there are crack resistant cultivars such as Early Girl and Roma which you might consider trying instead of the variety Fantastic that you like.

I’m also going to caution you about watering from overhead, too. A once a week spraying off of the plants might be a good thing to dislodge pests and dust from the plant’s surface, but as a constant way of delivering water to a plant is a big no-no.

Try splitting the times you water to keep the ground more evenly moist and see if that helps the tomatoes from getting that split on the stem end.

Hope it helps!

Q: I grew several green bean and scarlet runner bean plants this year and amazingly enough, the hummingbirds enjoyed poking about their flowers. The plants are pretty much finished, looking scraggly and not making many more beans now. I want to know if I would have time to plant another round of beans and still have them come of age so to speak this year? — E.H., Albuquerque

A: I’m thinking nothing ventured, nothing gained.

You’ll want to read the seed packets to help you figure out if you’d have adequate time to get the plants to harvest. I believe you’d still have time to grow plants that offer 60 to 75 days to harvest. We’ve got the balance of August, all of September through October to grow another crop of beans. That’s at least 75 days, especially if you get the next crop planted very soon. Weather depending, the growing days might continue until early November, too.

Granted the amount of daylight is waning but in this locale we still have gobs of sunny days ahead of us for you to get that next crop to harvest. It just depends on the variety you choose to plant and the days to harvest information you find on the seed packets. I’d say go for it.

Happy Diggin’ In!

Tracey Fitzgibbon is a certified nurseryman. Send garden-related questions to Digging In, Albuquerque Journal, 7777 Jefferson St. NE, Albuquerque, N.M. 87109, or to features@abqjournal.com.