were a bust in my garden. I didn't have a single good tomato among my 5 plants. It is the first time anything like that ever happened in my garden and I was initially perplexed. From the outside, the tomatoes looked perfect. But when I cut them open, they were white inside, and tasteless. Fortunately, the tomatoes were OK cooked, so I could use them to can spaghetti sauce.
My understanding is that the cause of this problem was a potassium deficiency. Apparently extremely high temperatures during ripening makes some tomato varieties susceptible. I'm not the only person in the area who had this happen last summer. The curious thing was that people who planted some of my tomato seedlings in their gardens had tomatoes that were just fine. What that tells me is that my soil is probably deficient in potassium.
This year seems like a good year to get a soil test at the U. I'd like to make sure that never happens to me again. I'm going to try some new tomato varieties this year as well and maybe that will also guard against an entire crop going bad. My order includes: Container Choice Hybrid from Parks, and some heirloom varieties, Stupice, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Black Krim, Mortgage Lifter, Kelloggs Breakfast, and Opalka. Maybe I'll find a few winners among them. I chose some of them just for the colors - I've been seeing beautiful tomato salads in cookbooks, but you need some color variation in order for them to really look spectacular.
I'm also looking ahead to the Como garage sale this spring. I love to plant seeds, and this year, I plan to include a lot of the excess plants in my sale. I have a suspicion that heirloom varieties might be popular in this area and they aren't always easy to find in garden centers. I guess we will see.
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