My tomato plants do really well, in fact too well we have to fight to keep them in control. But our tomatoes are not so good. A lot of them turn a kind of white or pale red as they ripen and the tomatoes are not very good, woody and generally of poor quality. I have three different kinds of tomatoes, didnÂt keep the steaks but one is a big tomato, one is a cherry tomato, and one is small but bigger than cherry. All three have exactly the same problem.

I live on the beach, right on the Gulf. The soil is pure white sand, so we built raised beds using 2 x 12s and filled the boxes with a mix of potting soil, mushroom compost, and peat moss. We water twice a day and fertilize regularly. Other vegetables have done a lot better, we had great lettuce before it got hot, and we have really nice eggplants and a variety of peppers. All a great success, but the tomatoes are a bust.

Any ideas what is wrong and how we might be able to fix it? I sure like fresh garden tomatoes; itÂs killing me to see those plants full of fruit just going bad.