Blossom end rot! What is it and how do I get rid of it? This is my first try at growing tomatoes. I'm growing "Early Cascade" that I started indoors from seed. It was a daily struggle to keep the cats from munching the seedlings (a fate which the pepper plants did not escape) so I'm very emotionally attached to these plants. I have lots of green tomatoes and a few that are starting to ripen. I thought that I would be able to pick my first ripe one last night, but the end is all brownish-gray and mushy. I was so disappointed. Almost all of the ripening ones have the same thing. Should I just pick them and throw them out? Can I put them in my compost pile?

HELP!!!!!

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Answers

Sherri, How very sad. I don't have much advice, we often get end rot early in the season and when things dry up a bit it goes away on its own. Hope yours does. We don't compost tomatoes because then they come up everywhere the next year and you are faced with the very difficult job of killing plants (horror upon horror). We feed ours to the chickens and pigs.

BTW our outhouse compost from last year has some lovely plants growing in it!!

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

I don't know if it will do you any good with these, Sherri, but I read that blossom end rot was caused by a lack of calcium. Some folks plant their tomatoes with dried milk mixed into the soil.

And DO keep those kitties away from the tomato plants -- the stems & leaves can poison them.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Some of mine have it too. I also heard it's caused by wet,dry,wet,dry, which is exactly what mine are getting. We need rain badly again, we didn't get enough.

I have a bunch of cow's milk. Maybe I could dilute it with the washer water and pour it on, huh. But only some of the tomatoes have it, not all the fruit.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Sherri,

So far so good. It most likely in my opinion caused by either lack of calcium OR the weather changes.

What I'd do....

Call your extension agent and ask him/her what is the likely culpret in your area.

Test my soil with the extension agent.

Give every plant a gallon of water every other day. If this starts to help withen 7 days, continue except when it rains. Water again after two days of no rain. Once the temp stays at 85 or lower, go to every three days, then every four late in the season when the temps are moderate.

If that didn't help, add calcium. I've never heard of adding dry milk, but you can find some type of readily available calcium at a garden store. I'd add only 1/4 strength every other week for 4 weeks with a quick fix. Opt for a little to get you by now, and a more permanent solution in something more slowly and naturally absorbed.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001

Thats backwards Sherri, put the compost pile on the tomatoes.:) We used to get quite technical out in the garden, paying close attention to this and that. One year we had a greenhouse full of beautiful tomatoes, followed all the rules and then in about three days we had mush on the vine throughout. We were quite discouraged until the last couple of years when we somewhat perfected our composting procedures. Now we have an abundance of compost and along with a little fish fertilizer, thats all we use and oh what a garden. About three weeks ago our neighbor planted about 6 tomato plants and they turned into a half dozen of the sorriest looking excuses for tomatoe plants I've ever seen. She asked us to water things while she went on vacation for a week. Well along with the water we snuck in a healthy dose of compost and you should see em now.Why I do believe it's a miracle cure for a whole lotta ailments. Good luck and don't forget about "fried green tomatoes" just in case.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001

Now I'VE got this problem. Mostly on the Viva Italia, but maybe that's because they're the first ones getting ripe. I've got them in the garden and in Earth Boxes on the deck.

Did you get any improvement, Sherri? We just had a huge amount of rain, but it was recent enough that I don't know if that's the culprit or not. The ones in the Earth Box have had even watering for sure, plus proper nutrients as far as I know. I bet I won't grow this variety again!

-- Anonymous, August 07, 2001

Okay, I went and cribbed for you ---

What is blossom-end rot? How can I prevent it?

Blossom-end rot is a disorder of tomato, squash, pepper, and all other fruiting vegetables. You notice that a dry sunken decay has developed on the blossom end (opposite the stem) of many fruit, especially the first fruit of the season. This is not a pest, parasite or disease process but is a physiological problem caused by a low level of calcium in the fruit itself.

Symptoms

BER, or blossom-end rot usually begins as a small "water-soaked looking" area at the blossom end of the fruit while still green. As the lesion develops, it enlarges, becomes sunken and turns tan to dark brown to black and leathery. In severe cases, it may completely cover the lower half of the fruit, becoming flat or concave, often resulting in complete destruction of the infected fruit.

Cause

Calcium is required in relatively large concentrations for normal cell growth. When a rapidly growing fruit is deprived of calcium, the tissues break down, leaving the characteristic lesion at the blossom end. Blossom-end rot develops when the fruit's demand for calcium exceeds the supply in the soil. This may result from low calcium levels in the soil, drought stress, excessive soil moisture, and/or fluctuations due to rain or overwatering . These conditions reduce the uptake and movement of calcium into the plant, or rapid, vegetative growth due to excessive nitrogen fertilization.

Management

Adequate preparation of the garden bed prior to planting is the key to preventing BER. Insure adequately draining soil in the bed by adding needed ammendments, maintain the soil pH around 6.5 - a pH out of this range limits the uptake of calcium. Lime (unless the soil is already alkaline), composted manures or bone meal will supply calcium but take time to work so must be applied prior to planting. Excess ammonial types of nitrogen in the soil can reduce calcium uptake as can a depleted level of phosphorus. After planting, avoid deep cultivation that can damage the plant roots, use mulch to help stabilize soil moisture levels and help avoid drought stress, avoid overwatering as plants generally need about one inch of moisture per week from rain or irrigation for proper growth and development.

Once the problem develops, quick fixes are difficult. Stabilize the moisture level as much as possible, feeding with manure or compost tea is recommended by many, foliar applications of calcium are of questionable value according to research because of poor absorption and movement to fruit where it is needed but many have reported that foliar application of magnesium (epsom salts) can effect added calcium uptake. Other various suggestions consist of powdered milk, crushed egg shells tea, bone meal tea, Tums tablets, etc. but prevention is the key. Some recommend removing affected fruit from to reduce stress in the plant.

BER should not be confused with fruit abortion or inadequate pollination although the symptoms may appear similar. The onset of BER occurs only after the fruit is well on it's way to development while insufficient pollination problems terminate the fruit while still quite small.

(lest you think I am above Blossom End Rot, my zucchinis had it this year when I didn't add dry milk powder from the beginning. I added it later, and now they are setting fruit without rot, that's where the green torpedoes came from! I think they recommend powdered milk because it stays put and doesn't wash away as fast as regular milk does. I also forgot to put in the ground up eggshells this year before planting, so that might have had something to do with it.)

-- Anonymous, August 08, 2001

I have a confession to make....I used some Miracle Grow on the tomato plants {hanging head in shame}. You can all wack me with rolled-up copies of Organic Gardening magazine. This is my first year gardening so I don't have a good compost pile yet, and I didn't have any powdered milk or eggshells. I did have a half-empty box of Miracle Grow stashed away on a back shelf in the garage, left over from who knows when. So I used it, and apparently that did the trick because the tomatoes have been much better since then. I think that they may have been too dry also, so I've been going out every night after work and giving them a little drink. They're predicting a chance of rain on Friday, yippee!!!

-- Anonymous, August 08, 2001

Well, we'll just let you off with a WARNING this time, Sherri!!

Man, you mention Miracle Grow (aka MG) over on GardenWeb on the Tomato, Vegetable, or Soil/Compost forums and watch the posts take off as everyone rehashes their position again. I notice very few converts to the opposition's thinking, sort of similar to a few other subjects I could mention....

Where was I? Oh yeah. Miracle Grow. I used to use it years ago for tomatoes and had poor production (of course, I was a novice too, so that didn't help matters any). Some of the opponents of the Big MG give a very sound reason not to use it -- too much nitrogen for tomatoes, so that you end up with herbaceous growth, but no fruit. All over arguments aside, to me that seemed like a real reason not to use it. A beautiful green bush is one thing, but doggone it, I want tomatoes!!! It can be a scrubbly little plant, but if it give me fruit, I'm happy.

Last year I was starting at Ground Zero as well for a veggie garden. As a matter of fact, it LOOKED like Ground Zero, the area had been used for burning yard wastes (limbs, leaves, pine needles) for several years, as well as having old lumber thrown on the burning pile, chunks of concrete, some aerosol cans, and other unsavory items)

The ground had been baked to death, and I have it on good authority that there is a large stash of old discarded lumber buried under there too (fortunately prior to the days of pressure treated wood), so the only thing to do was to go UP. I built raised beds with dirt 16" high. The only 'dirt' available was basically sand, with chopped up quack grass roots for organic matter. I turned that over 5 times picking out the bits as they sprouted!

I had one weeny little compost pile, and I emptied that, divided it up among the 4 beds, but it didn't go far. So I had two trailer loads of 2-year old horse manure brought in and added that in!!! THAT made a world of difference! I fertilized with products from Gardens Alive (organic), added egg shells (I got my mom to save them for me too. I have a 10 lb can of them now.) and some dry milk that the mice had chewed open. In the fall, I added more compost I'd made over summer, then turned in alfalfa pellets, some other grass pellets, alfalfa cubes soaked in water, more horse manure, and whatever I could get my hands on. It's doing pretty well. I'm going to sprinkle in the egg shells over the 8 beds (I added 4 more this year) this fall, plus I've got more compost going....

I love reading over on the soil/compost forum, all the gleeful people out making their adult version of mud pies by composting. They come up with some really great ideas of where to scrounge materials to compost, and I was very proud that I added in one of my own recently and got the approval of the soil gurus for having come up with a novel solution to someone's problem (urban composter had lots of green material, but no brown...wanted to know if he could use sawdust from pressure treated lumber!!! Everyone hopped on with polite but resounding "NO!!! DON'T DO IT!!!" but he had no source for carbon materials, so I suggested he find a pet store in his area and ask for the wood shavings out of their bunny, guinea pig, and rodent cages to add in, along with the 'enrichments'.)

Any stables in your area? Almost every horse establishment that I know or visit is only TOO happy to see a gardener pulling into the driveway with a trailer and a manure fork (or even a couple of bushel baskets in the back of the van...just make sure you have LIDS on them. Composted manure doesn't smell bad, but I had to jump on the brakes when a deer decided to toy with death on the highway, and I had one heck of a clean-up in the back of the van...)

-- Anonymous, August 08, 2001

I haven't quite figured out how to put a load of horse manure into the back of a Ford Escort without having a horrible mess, but I like the pet store idea. There's a store not too far from my house that I know sells rabbits, I just may stop by this weekend and see what they do with the used litter.

Too bad you can't compost used kitty litter, I've got plenty of that! :)

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001