First Aid For 'CRACKED' Tomatos...

A lot of us budding vegetable gardeners encounter numerous problems throughout the growing season with our prized crops...

It can be a very frustrating thing, and depending upon the severity of the issue, we either learn to accept certain gardening set-backs, or we develop severe emotional trauma leading to costly phycological repair through therapy at the hands of Shrinks, who will definitely shrink your bank account.

One of the most common nuisances for tomato growers are those ugly, disgusting cracks, or splits that suddenly appear on our tender little babies, sometimes overnight...or...worse...right before our eyes in the garden...???

How does this HAPPEN...!?!?!?

Well, I'm glad you asked because I've been on YouTube painstakingly researching the phenomena in an attempt to better understand what may cause hideous tomato cracking and how to prevent it from ever happening again...

Unfortunately, the reasons vary and exactly why yours are splitting may remain a mystery even after learning what causes it; it can be from over-watering, calcium deficiency, or piling too much fertilizer onto the soil (To name a few)

One lady that I stumbled upon with a video on YouTube about the subject, was convinced that Leprechauns were sneaking in during the night while she was asleep and slicing her juicy hybrids with a knife in an attempt to drive her crazy.

She said that she finds little footprints in her loamy soil every morning upon inspection, and is mystified as to how those little devils are sneaking past her security cameras and boobytraps that she set up all around her property.

The poor woman is now staying awake all night long, hiding in an oak tree with a shotgun and a flashlight, waiting for the varmints to appear...

Though I surely can sympathize with, and admire her fortitude, I'm not willing to possibly fall out of a tree in the dead of night from lack of sleep...no matter how much I love my sweet, little red gems from Mother Nature…

Instead, I've decided to administer First Aid to any of the babies I find injured once dawn breaks - and...I think I've found the perfect solution; or rather...healing.

Check out this humongous split I found on one of my most cherished Nightshade... It suddenly appeared one morning after a recent nighttime, rainstorm.

Of course I was horrified; this was the tomato I'd chosen to proudly show off to my pompous, garden competitive neighbor...

He's always showing off his tubers, melons, broccoli and the like, while laughing at mine; quite belittling to say the least.

Anyway...I had a sudden burst of enlightenment while weeping over my injured jumbo and figured, why not administer medical attention to the suffering thing, like I'd do to myself if I'd been sliced open...!?!?!?

Here's a picture of some antiseptic cream and bandages I retrieved from my medicine cabinet for the task at hand.

As you can see from the following photograph, I have gingerly applied an ample serving of Silver Sulfadiazine (Which I had left over from the Vet for my cat) and then pasted a quality bandage across the gaping wound...

I fully expect a complete healing within a week or so and will keep you posted...

If there's a little scar left afterwards, that will be fine in my opinion...it'll match the scar I have on my buttock from having backed into my friends wooden sword as a child, while we were playing The Three Musketeers at his grandmother's house.

She fainted and almost had a heart attack seeing all the blood running down my leg but, that's a story for another post :>)

I'm outta here for now my friends...see ya again, soon.

Ciao

Another Great Gardening Episode from the Mind of @AngryMan on Steemit, August 16, 2019