Yep, that is catfacing. It ain't pretty but can be eaten if you cut away the funky looking parts.

As far as I am aware, you can't prevent it. It is usually the result of fused blossoms early in the season. I suppose you could clip and "weird" blossoms, but I am always so anxious for the first tomatoes that I leave them.

Bets

I have no idea why "they" call it catfacing, I have never seen a cat as ugly as any cat faced tomatoes, and I have seen some tom cats that were pretty scarred and mangled.

Bets

As far as I am aware, you can't prevent it. It is usually the result of fused blossoms early in the season. I suppose you could clip and "weird" blossoms, but I am always so anxious for the first tomatoes that I leave them.

*****

Catfacing isn't due to fused blossoms, rather, it's due to pollination at low temps and happens with mainly the large beefsteak varieties. It can also happen when the blossoms are disturbed in some manner. So there's really no way to prevent catfacing b'c you can't change the temps when pollination is occurring. And it's usually just the first fruits of the season that can be catfaced.

Fused blossoms can also give rise to large ugly looking fruits but most of the time you can see the lobes of the various fruits that comprise the one large fruit.

If it's clearly catfacing, then there's no problem saving seeds, but if it's a fruit from fused blossoms then I'd never save seeds from those.

When in doubt as to which it is, I wouldn't save seeds. I don't save seeds from any of the earliest fruits on a plant, but there are other reasons why I do that in addition to the fused blossom/catfacing issue.

Your picture looks like catfacing to me b'c I don't see the multiple lobes that would make up a fused blossom fruit, but only you know if that plant had fused blossoms in the first place. ( smile)

Carolyn

Hi Carolyn,

Thanks for the clarification! I clearly mixed up my information. (Sheepish Grin)

Bets

Thanx everyone. The reason I'm concerned about saving seeds from this plant is the temps. It is supposed to hit the mid 90's here tomorrow and may not drop much below that until sometime in September. I'm afraid production may shut down and this might be the only fruit I see from this plant. Then again, if I only get one cat-faced fruit per year, maybe Marianna's Peace is not for me!

I'm just being negative. I'm sure that I'll see hundreds of MP's of this plant and the other two like it.

archerb, where are you located that you expect temps over 90 until September. I see you're in zone 8 and just wouldn't expect such high sustained temps for that period of time. ( smile)

Carolyn

Carolyn,

Texas. Central Texas to be a bit more exact. Here's our high/low listed in the 10-day forcast:
Wed 94/74
Thu 96/73
Fri 96/72
Sat 93/71
Sun 93/72
Mon 93/71
Tue 93/70
Wed 91/70
Thu 89/70
Fri 88/68

Of course, anything past 3-5 days out is a best guess by the forecasters. But, I'm in Texas. Once summer sets in, temperatures have no reason to drop until after August. We may have a freak cold spell this month, but I don't think it's going to happen.

I know I'm being pessimistic. We are talking about weather reports, so anything goes. 10-day forecasts tend to change daily for days that are further out, but I don't expect to see highs below 80 in the near future.

Here is a link that might be useful: 10-day weather forcast for Kyle TX

archerb, why is it they never believe how hot it is down here. If we don't have 30 days over 100, I think it's a cool summer.

One year it was 85 on Christmas Eve.

"Goner"? What do you mean? Some of the biggest, tastiest tomatoes I've ever eaten were catfaced. They're ugly, but apart from that, there's nothing wrong with them. You can't really see the ugly side in this photo, but this is one of the biggest tomatoes I've ever grown, and it was catfaced:

{{gwi:1327216}}

I definitely saved the seeds from that one!

Karen, do you see the different lobes on what you show as opposed to the picture of the initial one in this thread?

I would suggest that yours, b'c of the different lobes, is from fused blossom, and is not catfacing and if from fused blossoms there's a greater probability of having X pollinated seeds as I mentioned above.

The new trend with those who grow tomatoes for competition, as in who can grow the largest ones, is to force fused blossoms b'c it's known that larger fruits are more possible.

I don't grow tomatoes for size or shape, rather, I grow them primarily for taste. ( smile)

Carolyn

You're right Karen, I will be eating SOME of this tomato, but it is certainly not the tomato I'll be taking to work or making BLT's out of. I'll probably eat some of the good parts and if it's as good as people say, I might even save some seed from it as I planted all the Marianna's Peace seeds I had.

To Carolyn's Point, I think Karen's is multiple blooms growing together from a fused or mega bloom.

Below is a picture of a megabloom I found yesterday on my Stupice plant :)

{{gwi:1327217}}