Friday, August 03, 2007

Blossom-end Rot

Blossom-end Rot. I believe one of my four Supersonic tomato plants is suffering from something called Blossom-end Rot. It's a little unusual in that 2 of the 4 plants are planted right next to each other, side-by-side and one of them is suffering from this problem while the other one appears to be fine and showing no effects of Blossom-end Rot; same with the other 2, they're fine.

Blossom-end Rot of tomatoes is a physiological disorder caused by a lack of sufficient calcium in the blossom end of the fruit. Applying too much fertilizer at one time or excessive nitrogen fertilization can result in blossom-end rot.

Here are a couple pictures of what ours look like -




I'm not sure what's caused this problem but I'm thinking of a couple things that may have contributed; The raised garden box they're in is new and so is the soil I used to fill it. I used a mixture of regular old soil, leave and grass clipping compost and manure from my chicken pen, which also has rabbit droppings mixed in too. Perhaps I used too much chicken manure, which is typically high in nitrogen or simply too much fertilizer - too rich maybe. However, you'd think it would have effected both tomato plants since they're planted side-by-side.

Well we won't be enjoying or canning with these particular tomatoes but the chickens love em, so I guess it's not a total loss. I will have the soil tested at the end of the season to see if we can't determine the problem and fix it before next spring. Live and learn...

2 comments:

Silvia said...

I've also had this problem with just the first few tomatoes on a plant. Don't know why! The rest turned out fine, though.

SmF732 said...

Actually, ours is doing the same too. Some of the earlier tomatoes are suffering from this problem, while the newer ones are not. Interesting...