I HARVESTED TWO RIPE TOMATOES THIS WEEK, or so I thought. Too bad they were all black and nasty inside. Like I said not long ago in “Tomato Troubles in a Wet Year,” we’ve got trouble here in River City. And the plot just sickened.
I’m thinking the nearly 6 inches of additional rain this last week won’t exactly be providing any curative effects, either.
What’s wrong with my fruit? The plants they came from look otherwise-healthy (all are hybrid paste types; my heirlooms are on the critical list already, having no built-in disease resistance, apparently, to whatever ails me). I actually think that the red ones with the black insides suffered not from a disease, but from some meteorological upset at pollination time, affecting the would-be seeds, which might mean the later-setting ones (many green fruits are hanging now, all apparently intact) will be OK. (Aren’t I the endless Pollyana? Please, don’t burst my watery bubble.)
But that green guy with wet blossom end? I bet he has some anthracnose, or alternaria, or something else disgusting-sounding in the fungal arena.
I am no plant pathologist, so who knows what’s really up, and I suspect even the professionals’ heads are spinning in a year that has the Pacific Northwest and parts of the South like Texas toasted, and the Northeast drowning and relatively cool.
I’m just a gardener, and a cook whose vegetarian diet relies heavily on an annual stash of all my year’s worth of tomato products that I put up. So what I all I really want to know is this:
Where’s that going to come from? The usual “staples” (like part of last year’s frozen bounty, below) are starting to look like they’ll be luxury items in this upside-down year.
Welcome, Leslie. Yes, hah, some year for the experiment on both our parts (in “hydroponic” tomatoes here, in other tortures there). So sorry. But we gardeners, we just try again next year, don’t we? :) See you soon!
I also faced problems regarding hairloom tomatoes in 2009. It was lateblight. This year The tomato plants are looking great, Let’s hope for the best.
I read that this kind of blossom-end rot was caused by calcium deficiency. I had a lot of it in my garden for a couple of years running, in all the tomatoes and some of the peppers. Sure enough, supplementing with calcium seemed to do the trick. The tomatoes were great this year.
Hi, Angela. Yes, indeed. Ca is moved up into the plant (and then the fruit) in water, so it’s especially problematic in years of erratic rain/irregular watering. Some soils may have enough Ca but it doesn’t get up into the plant in stressful times; some soils lack the Ca in the first place, etc. This U of Georgia factsheet may provide more details on prevention.