Down to Earth Garden Club

I had someone call this evening to say that all of his ripe tomatoes were splitting. Is anyone else having this problem?
The reason is the recent rain. After a fairly dry summer the change in available water is causing the tomatoes to swell faster than the skin can grow. This causes the splitting.
I've had two cabbages split as well in the past week. The reason is the same. The roots are taking up water and the inner leaves are swelling to the point that the pressure bursts the cabbage.
I've read that the problems with splitting cabbage can be helped by root pruning the plant. Plunge a shovel into the soil near the plant and cut off some of the horizontal roots. This will slow the absorption of water.
I don't know if it would work on tomatoes as well but as my caller said his tomatoes are done producing fruit anyway and anything is worth a try to ripen the remaining tomatoes with out having them split.

Do you think they loose anything by table ripening them? We usually end up doing that at the end of the season because we run out of warm weather.

I think it depends on how close to being ripe they are. We have such cold nights out here that we have trouble ripening them too. The hot sun seems to make them sweeter if you happen to have any hot sun.