Blossom End Rot And How To Protect Your Tomato Plant

Blossom end rot is such a disappointing situation to have with your tomatoes because you don't even know your tomatoes have it until they are at the picking stage. The damage has occurred weeks before and there is little you can do about it in the final stage.

What is so disappointing about this is that you do not find out the state of your tomatoes until they have started to color, just as you are getting excited about being able to pick your lovely home grown tomatoes.

The actual fact of blossom end rot is that it is a disease that starts at the point where the blossom has dropped off the fruit. Blossom end rot does occur in other fruit types as well, such as watermelon and capsicums.

The appearance of blossom end rot.

What often happens is that where the damaged skin is, there is a secondary mould which may grow and those who do not know the difference, think that the mould is actually the cause of the problem, but not so. This disease gives the appearance at the flower end of the fruit, of a shrunken brownish green discoloration of the fruit. In the early stages it just shows as a discoloration at the end, but as the fruit ripens it shrinks and looks quite awful.

The cause of blossom end rot

Parasitic diseases are quite common with tomatoes but this disease is a physiological one which means it is caused by one or more environmental factors affecting the plant and its growth.

The cause of this disease is the supply of calcium to the developing fruit not being met by the plant itself. Sometimes it could be lack of calcium in the soil but that is not necessarily the case. Calcium is a very important component to healthy plant and fruit growth. In fact it is essential to the forming and holding together of plant cells. What happens is that in an area where cell growth is very rapid, as in the forming of fruit, there is an inadequate supply of calcium because of the distance of the source, thereby causing the death of cells and the breakdown of plant tissues.

As the flower starts to form the fruit it is this point that is furthest away from the calcium supply coming up the stem and therefore the last point to receive the nutrients. Any lack of nutrients, and in this case calcium, affects the plant in some way.

Although we have discussed the lack of calcium, it needs to be understood that it is not the lack of calcium as such. In other words, if you sprinkled calcium powder around the plant, that would not fix the problem.

It is the absorption of calcium throughout the plant and into the cells that prevents, or stops further blossom end rot. If you have this problem then look at your soil and your watering as they are common problems with calcium uptake. One cause is the one you most likely won't be able to do anything about if you are growing tomatoes outside, and that is hot windy weather that dries the leaves and slows down the travel of calcium to the fruit formation area.

This is what I believe was the cause of the blossom end rot that I saw on my tomatoes because at the time that the fruit about 2 foot up the plant were forming we had three weeks of extremely windy weather, almost gale force. It was the tomatoes in that section that were affected with the blossom end rot. The first ripening tomatoes were alright and the ones further up the plant were alright so I have to come to the conclusion it was the terrible weather that cause my problem. The answer would obviously be to protect the plant from hot dry winds.


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Why not visit the website Grow Tomatoes Successfully to help solve any of your tomato growing problems and where you can read articles about growing tomatoes.