Cherokee purple, I think. The splitting was because I soaked them to clean them and left them in the water too long.
This may be NSFW because of that one on the left.
The other tomatoes on the plant don’t have buttholes. Why do these? This was the first harvest from this plant.
I’m in Phoenix, Arizona. This plant almost died during a frost but has fully grown back since.
by maddawg56789
21 Comments
Looks like you have tomatoes.
Beefsteak type tomatoes are very susceptible to being buttholes. It comes with the pack.
Just slice as normal and enjoy
I seem to always have this myself, most people tell me it indicates inconsistent watering.
Sometimes tomatoes got buttholes. Nothin’ to worry about. Are the other ones that are shaped differently a different varietal?
Heirloom tomatoes are buttholes.
Pretty normal for the first fruit off the plant.
Totally normal for the variety. Honestly they can get funky. But they’re also the juiciest slicing tomatoes out there.
This is what’s called catfacing. No one quite knows why it happens, but researchers have theorized that it has to do with disturbance to the plants during fruit and flower formation. Could be because temperatures were abnormally high. Could be that temps were too low. Could be that temps fluctuated too much between daytime and nighttime temperatures. Could be that the flowers were damaged by insects like thrips before they set fruit. Some University of Massachusetts researchers think it could be too much pruning or too much nitrogen.
If you have thrips, treat your plants ASAP. If you’re applying nitrogen to tomatoes, stop–tomatoes don’t need nitrogen because that causes them to put out lots of leaves and fewer fruits. Keep to a good watering schedule and make sure that you don’t have times when they are very dry and times when they are very wet. Other than this, there is nothing you can do about catfacing. The tomatoes are fine to eat, just cut that bit off.
People are so used to blemish free store tomatoes… These are normal tomatoes.
It’s more like a belly button than a butthole IMO. It’s where the parts of the flower were before the fruit grew. Your tomatoes have an innie.
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In german folklore we have tales of the elf we call the tomato-sodomizer
So, it’s “catfacing” and “zippering” and both have similar causes.
[Also the one on the left might have come from what’s called a “fasciated” blossom, aka a “megabloom”]
It’s more common on fruit that has set in temps/humidity that are on the borderline of the required conditions for fruitset.
Some varieties are more prone to both than others arw….I wouldn’t say C. Purple is *terribly* bad about it, by heirloom standards, but they do tend towards it. In my conditions, the earlier ones will almost always will have something of a “navel” on the blossom end.
Also, you have someone telling you above that excess nitrogen can cause it….well, that’s not entirely true. Getting heavy on the nitrogen *can* contribute to fasciated growth (and can also make the splitting that’s shown in your pics more likely), but it has much more to do with weather conditions and the particular variety. And it’s certainly not true that “tomatoes don’t need nitrogen” — that’s utter horseshit.
Later fruit should be much more regular, but you can usually expect at least *some* catfacing and/or zippering on C. Purple.
Unfortunately, they’re Bug-holes
Call them heirloom and then act like they are fancy. Good news is they are perfectly good and delicious to eat still.
You can use them in a tossed salad 🥗.
Its a choice.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Heirloom tomatoes?
It’s a mild form of cat facing. Which is from imperfectly formed flowers and probably reflects some aspect of the growing conditions (water temps nutrients etc).
Perfectly good to eat although the bands can sometimes decrease the total edible flesh. You could conceivably pull off obviously malformed blooms to get more uniform fruits. Not sure what influence that would have on total end yield for the plant and mostly it seems like work just for works sake.
that is normal for cherokee purple
you can pick them when they first start some color and let them ripen inside. unless you stop watering them and stop the rain…
If they didn’t have buttholes, how would they poop?