You nurture your tomato plants until you have beautiful fruit maturing on the vine.Upon closer inspection, you discover that somet
06.06.2023 - 19:12 / gardenerspath.com / Helga George
Blossom-End Rot: What to Do if Your Tomatoes Rot on the BottomYou may be all too familiar with this scenario. You have lovingly tended your tomato plants and watched the first delectable fruits of your labor develop…only to see them ruined by ugly brown patches on the blossom end.
This is the dreaded and misnamed blossom-end rot.
Why misnamed? Because this “rot” has nothing to do with an infection and everything to do with the misallocation of calcium in the plant. It’s not technically a “disease” at all, since no pathogens are involved.
But don’t just assume that your soil is low in calcium.
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The problem may be due to other factors, like the amount of moisture available in the soil and the state of the roots.
The use of insecticides or fungicides will not solve this problem. Read on to learn how to prevent blossom-end rot from occurring, and whether there’s anything you can do once you find it on your tomatoes.
Here’s what I’ll cover:
What Is Blossom-End Rot?Blossom-end rot is the formation of lesions on the bottom of the fruit that can grow to cover as much as one-third to one-half of each tomato. The lesions start as small, water-soaked spots. They rapidly grow larger and turn dark as the fruit ripen.
If the lesions get large, they dry out and flatten, turning black and leathery. It starts when the fruits are mature green and starting to ripen.
Often, this happens to the first tomatoes produced during the season, while those from later on may well be fine. This is particularly true for indeterminate varieties, since they produce tomatoes until the end of the season.
In contrast, if you grow determinate varieties
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