Gardener's Guide: Do You Have Black Spots on Your Tomato Plants?

Your garden is growing profusely, you visit it everyday with the assumption of bring in a basketful of juicy red tomatoes but what do you fine? There are brownish-black spots on the bottom of them. Some are the size of a quarter and others are half the size of the tomato. What are these? You have Blossom End Rot!

Growing tomatoes, this is very common. No it's not a disease that your plants have; it's lack of calcium in the tomato. Calcium is one thing that the tomatoes need to develop so if the tomatoes are not getting enough calcium, then further development stops and the tomato begins to rot. So it's not a disease.

Most people think that if there tomato plants have blossom end rot, meaning lack of calcium, then they need to add lime to their soil. This could be far from the truth. Check out your other plants in your garden. Are they growing and producing? If your soil were lacking in calcium then your other plants wouldn't be healthy enough to produce. So the problem is in the tomato plant its self. The plant is unable to absorb the calcium that is already in your soil. So stop buying lime, you're wasting your money.

The main reason for your tomato plant not being able to absorb calcium is not watering the right way, meaning the supply of water has not been even. Blossom end rot will not hit your plants if you can maintain a consistently moist soil. Never let the soil dry out completely and then saturate the ground with water. This fluctuation of dry and wet soil will bring on blossom end rot. So the key is to keep a consistently moist soil.

There is one other reason that could bring on blossom end rot and that is fertilizing. If the fertilizer you are using has a high nitrogen count then that can push back the calcium that your tomato plant needs. Check your fertilizer, you should have a lower nitrogen count and a higher phosphorous and potassium ratio. You could add some lime around the base of your plants; this can help release some of the calcium in your soil while you wait for the previous fertilize time to go by. One other point, make sure you are not fertilizing to much, as a matter of fact you can hold up with the fertilizer when your tomatoes are small.

There are just sometime you have to except blossom end rot. Mother nature can bring it on with hot to cool temperatures, heavy rains after it has been dry for a while or during a drought. Any weather conditions can have an effect on the nutrients in the ground so your tomato plants suffer right along. The same thing happens to farmer's crops when the same crop has been planted in the same field over and over again; the nutrients are depleted.

Here are some tips that can help stop blossom end rot but remember nothing is a sure-fire-way of never getting it.

The first thing every gardener should do is to mulch around every plant, every type of plant can benefit from a good mulching. Mulching helps with trying to keep the soil at a consistent moisture level. But remember you still have to water weekly if you haven't had any rain. Mulching should be at least 2 inches in depth.

When you fertilize, remember that the nitrogen level should be lower than the phosphorous and potassium ratio.

If you use a hoe when you weed make sure you don't go to deep into the soil and don't use the hoe to close to the base of the plant. Plants send out feeder roots and you don't want to damage them.

Plants need well-drained soil so if your soil is clay, adding amendments will help in braking up the clay balls also adding organic matter helps to add nutrients to your soil. If your soil doesn't drain well then your plants roots will smother and this will reduce the amount of calcium the plant intakes.

There is a spray that is a calcium nitrate solution. You can spray this on your plants once a week to help reduce blossom end rot.