TMD May 28

The bottoms of my tomatoes are turning brown. What is causing this?

I’ve been getting a lot of these calls over the past couple of weeks and the cause has been the same for everyone. It’s called end-rot or blossom end-rot. It is not restricted to just tomatoes though. Eggplants, peppers and melons can also suffer from this problem.

Blossom end-rot is caused by a calcium deficiency in the fruit. Calcium is needed in large amounts for rapidly growing plants. When it is deprived, the tissues will break down where the calcium is in short supply (usually at the bottom of the plant). Calcium can be shorted to the plant for more than one reason. Low calcium levels, drought stress, excessive soil moisture fluctuations, or even rapid vegetable growth because of too much nitrogen applied to the plant can cause end-rot.

In order to fix this problem, there are a few things that you can do.

1. Calcium applications with a foliar spray. There is a product called No-More-End-Rot that works well.

2. Liming will add calcium to the soil.

3. Use mulch around the plant to keep soil moisture more consistent. Most plants require around 1 inch of water per week from rainfall or manual watering.

If you have any questions on this or anything else, call, come by the store, e-mail me at davisfeed@yahoo.com or visit our web site at www.davisfeed.com

My quote of the week comes from an unknown source. It reads, "Never do card tricks in front of your poker buddies”