I have lots of green Tomatoes on the vine, but none are turning rosy yet. Yesterday while working at the base of the plants weeding, glanced up and saw that the bottoms of some heirlooms looked like this.
Ugh! I did some sleuthing online (love the internet!) and found it's most likely blossom end rot. Caused by lack of calcium. Exacerbated by not enough water. It
is really hot, but I've been giving them a good drink every other day, and the foliage looks fine so I thought the plants were okay.
Only one plant really seems to be affected, it's one of the grown-from-seed ones that didn't get fed crushed eggshells yet (every time I have a bowl of eggshells ready I give it to one tomato plant). So today I pulled aside the mulch/compost and gave all the tomatoes some lime, what few eggshells I had, and a handful of cornmeal for good measure (I read that is good against the blight). Then put the mulch back and watered well. Don't know if any of it will help, but we'll see.
4 comments:
Oh no!! At least it looks like you found the potential problem! Looks like the egg shells really have helped your other plants with the calcium! Are you getting tomatoes yet on the other plants?
Yeah, all the plants have green tomatoes- even the cherry tomatoes now too! But none are ripe yet. We've had lots of hot weather, so I keep hoping every day for red tomatoes... still waiting.
What was the verdict of your experiment? Did the eggshells, lime, and cornmeal work to get rid of the rot? (i'm having the same problem, which is why i want to know!!) Thanks ;)
Yes, it actually did seem to work! The rot did not occur in later-ripening tomatoes on that plant, as well as I recall.
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