Blossom end rot!

[b54red]

I used to think it had something to do with calcium but since I have had all my beds tested and a couple were low in calcium and one was extremely low and they were beds that tomatoes were grown in last year with no BER. The one sure way to get BER and it seems only on some some varieties of tomatoes is to have big swings in the moisture level of the soil you are growing them in. Uneven watering is very easy to do when growing in containers as the moisture level can change so quickly and so often which only compounds the problem. After over forty years of growing tomatoes with occasional BER showing up I can say that I can't remember it ever happening when I didn't allow the plants to dry out too much from not watering regularly. I still sometimes get BER in a tomato but it only seems to happen when I can't get around to watering when the plants need it and it almost always seems to be round or plum shaped tomatoes that will occasionally get it. The best thing I ever did to almost completely eradicate the problem of BER was to start heavily mulching my tomato plants with cypress mulch which greatly slows the soils loss of moisture even in the hottest and windiest weather. If you could put about 4 to 5 inches of cypress mulch on top of your potting mix in your containers I think it would help a great deal and the cost is very little.


Bill