Like Ed, I've also seen similar spotting on tomato and potato leaves after periods of heavy rain. In my case, at least, it seemed to be more of a nutrient/water issue than disease. I also have firsthand experience with septoria, and your photo certainly doesn't look like septoria to me. At least at this stage, I wouldn't jump to any conclusions. It might be fungal, but the definitive sign for me would be further white/yellow discoloration around the black spots.

It looks to me as if your problem is cracking rather than critter damage. Tomatoes crack primarily because of inconsistent moisture (the inside of the tomato grows quicker than the skin can stretch). Temperature changes can also play a role. Some tomato varieties are more prone than others to cracking. For instance, my Black Krims crack horribly! (But the taste is worth it.) On the other hand, just next to my Black Krim is a Rutgers: lovely fat tomatoes, the vast majority without any cracks at all. There are three types of cracks: radial cracks (which begin at the stem and radiate outward; these can be very deep); concentric cracks (these form circles or semi-circles around the stem -- your photo shows a concentric crack); and spiral cracks (which spiral around the fruit irregularly; some tomatoes crack so badly they burst). In hot sun, some tomatoes have tiny cracks on their shoulders: this is called shoulder checking and is variety-related. The split at the bottom of your tomato is not typical (though I have a cherry tomato that likes to split across the bottom like that). The split in your picture is also unusually wide -- but it doesn't look like caterpillar damage, and it looks much more like a crack than any type of animal damage. Have you had a lot of rain (probably not, as you're in California), or did you give your plants more water than usual recently? There are some things you can do to limit or prevent cracking. One is to mulch around and under your tomato plants: that lowers the amount of water that evaporates from the soil, so your plants will be less likely to dry out between waterings. Another is to water regularly (and at least 1" per week -- but not too much, or the flavor of the fruit will suffer!). And you can buy tomato varieties that are less prone to cracking; here's a list: http://www.harvestwizard.com/2009/07/crack-resistant_tomato_varieti.html It's been a dry summer here. We had three or four days of certain rain headed our way. Yesterday I picked every tomato that was showing a significant amount of yellow. If I hadn't, they would have been guaranteed to crack because of the multiple inches of rain we're getting.

http://i.imgur.com/2SxH7.jpg http://i.imgur.com/fQYnv.jpg http://i.imgur.com/zLLyt.jpg The fireplace was original to the house built in 1978 and was converted to a gas log fireplace since then. I've removed the logs to clean it because when it was converted the previous owner failed to do so!! Anyways, the only thing i could possibly come up with is that its a 'fireback'...but why did it have about 50 screws (literally).

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/tomato Might want to post in the Growing Tomatoes forum, rather than the Tomato Pests & Disease forum. The former gets much more traffic. There's a couple things I see off hand that could be a problem. One is that a 5 gallon bucket is pretty much the bare minimum sized container that you'd want to grow full-sized tomato plants in. 10-15 gallon would be much better. The plants quickly get root bound and stressed much quicker and need watered and fed much more often in smaller containers. Dwarf plants will do okay in 5 gallon buckets. Can't tell if there are spots on the leaves or not but early blight or one of the many other fungus/disease that tomatoes get is a possibility. The treatment for all is the same though. Remove the affected leaves and start spraying with a fungicide. Also, general color of the plants, unless it's due to the camera, look anemic to me. Have you fed them at all? Rodney