What's wrong, Mortgage Lifter, Part Pictures

[Plantaholic12]

So a new thread, forgive me.
What is this condition called?

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This plant, all eight feet of it, is having a rough life.

Is this a condition or a deformity or a ?

[MissS]

@Plantaholic12 The belly buttons are normal. The cracking is caused by the plants receiving too much water just prior to ripening. As the fruits are turning their skins toughen some and can not expand. If you water deeply or a rain comes, the fruits uptake the water but can not expand and so the skin splits. To avoid this, pick fruits that are starting to blush before a rain or before you water.

[Plantaholic12]

Normal Belly Buttons?

Please, someone else confirm these are normal.

I've grown Mortgage Lifters for several years and never seen this...normal for Halladay?

[ddsack]

What @MissS said. These tomatoes look normal for given conditions. I don't remember if my Estler's Mortgage Lifter's had the extra protrusions at the blossom end we call belly buttons this year, but others of my tomato varieties did. Has to do with pollination issues, especially those set early in the season, nothing harmful. Just a milder effect of the conditions that competition growers of giant tomatoes have in their fused and lumpy giants. Aside from the splitting, those tomatoes look pretty nice!

[Plantaholic12]

Thank you, MissS and ddsack, for educating me. Sixty years growing tomatoes and "cat facing" never showed up.

Thanks again for the help.

[Paulf]

Amazing that you have never had "cat facing" in all those years. Most years (and for me only fifty-two years) at least some of the tomatoes express this condition. Never has that condition affected the flavor. But then none of my tomatoes are grown to be pretty, just flavorful. In their way cat faced fruits are pretty.

[bower]

That's funny, I was thinking to myself today as I was chopping down plants, you won't find a tomato grower anywhere that hasn't been through a bad year for one condition or another. Comes with the territory.
60 years without splitting or catfacing, it must be a record.

[slugworth]

slugs got to mine this year
I don't like holy tomatoes.
My mortgage lifter had a few tomatoes then looked like the wicked witches feet after the ruby slippers were removed.

[ddsack]

Perhaps if a person sticks to the commercial round red F1 hybrid tomatoes they would not experience much catfacing. I don't remember seeing much of it back when I grew a few different popular "Boy" or "Beef" varieties, so I assume they've been bred not to show the trait.
You can't count on heirlooms to look perfect every time, but the flavors are well worth a bit of knife work.

[slugworth]

sometimes the bottom looks like a bad case of hemorrhoids