You may be lucky enough to be growing your own tomatoes this year, and hopefully they are fruiting up nicely.
However there may be something lurking at the bottom of the fruits, small dark brown circles….cue the horror movie screams!!
I noticed by first bit of Blossom End Rot in the Twin Towns Community Garden this week – where I’m currently delivering some gardening sessions on a Wednesday evening, and this was the question which was posed to me by the occupant of the bed.
Gareth Austin
By Gareth Austin
Going by the dramatically sounding name ‘Blossom End Rot’ this is an affliction which beset forming fruits, causing them to produce noticeable dark circles at the bottom of the fruit. This doesn’t affect the taste of the formation of the rest of the fruit, it merely leave the fruit smaller in stature and with this unpleasant inflection at the bottom.
Rather than a disease, Blossom End Rot is a cultural problem, brought on my inconsistent watering, allowing soil around tomatoes to dry out reduces the amount of calcium made available to the plant. One of the results of a lack of calcium is lack of new cell production, this manifests itself in tomatoes (also Peppers and Aubergines) as these characteristic dark patches. High greenhouse humidity can bring this problem on, so can over feeding.
Any fruit that has the fruit is incurable, but you can prevent other fruits from being affected by increasing your watering. With tomatoes you should try to water frequently, so rather than just pouring huge amounts of water on in the morning (and perhaps a lot of it running off and not being utilised), try giving them a few waterings during the day, say one in the morning and then one at night.
Tomatoes are shallow rooted, so water is easily lost away from their rotting area if you are growing them in the soil, and in growing bags they are a devil to keep watered! So develop a timing and a frequency which matched your management. The humidity problem can be solved by increasing the ventilation – an important task to prevent tomato blight also.
So to answer the question ‘Are my Tomatoes ruined’, no but use this Blossom End Rot is an visual marker that you need to alter your management to get the best from your plants.
