Ten Pound Tomato Grow Organic – Eat Better

September 6, 2010

The 3 Unknown Major Nutrients Your Garden Needs

Filed under: Garden Soil,Newsletter Archive — Perry Droast @ 7:03 pm

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Tomato Invasion Newsletter #6

What’s with the pale yellow leaves with the green veins?

And why does that tomato have a big brown patch on it?

If your garden soil is short on magnesium, the leaves on your plants could turn yellow while the veins stay green. While that may be a nice look for a tropical plant in a pot because it’s supposed to look that way, the plants in your vegetable garden shouldn’t. And even if one plant in your garden looks that way, your soil doesn’t contain enough of at least one of the ‘other three major nutrients’ necessary for healthy plant growth.

The ‘other’ major nutrients your garden needs…besides N-P-K

In addition to nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, your garden needs lots of…

Sulfur – for fast root growth while plants are young and to help protein content

Calcium – to support cellular division, plant growth, and fruit development

Magnesium – essential element of chlorophyl while balancing calcium

Calcium also buffers the soil PH and helps your plants utilize other nutrients as well. Magnesium and calcium also need to be in balance with each other for plants to take up and utilize many other nutrients found in the soil.

In effect, the amount of these three major nutrients in your soil need to be balanced for your garden to grow like it should.

Why are these considered major and not minor nutrients?

The classification of major vs. minor relates to the amount necessary. Relatively large amounts of sulfur, calcium, and magnesium are required for your garden to grow strong healthy plants. When plenty of these three nutrients are available, you get wonderful deep-green shrubs, beautiful flowers, and abundant produce.

Minor or micronutrients are only required in trace amounts whereas major nutrients are needed in much larger amounts.

What happens if the nutrient levels in your garden soil aren’t enough?

Some crops require more of one nutrient than others. For instance, potatoes need fairly high levels of sulfur to produce bumper crops. Sulfur deficiency also mimics nitrogen deficiency causing leaves to turn yellow. Without enough sulfur, not only can your plants leaves turn yellow, they may curl upwards too.

Soils deficient in calcium causes blossom-end rot in tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. Even if there’s enough calcium, if your soil lacks magnesium, the results are still the same. These two elements help balance each other out. If you don’t have both, you may as well not have either. Calcium deficiency also causes black and dying tips on beans, similar to blossom-end rot, except showing up in a different way.

Lack of magnesium can also show up as yellow areas in the leaves although the veins in the leaves can still be green. Low magnesium also causes forked roots on beets and miniature potatoes.

So if someone sees yellow leaves in your garden and tells you to add nitrogen, you now know it can also be any of these three other lesser known major nutrients that are missing.

How do you ensure proper levels in your soil?

Before you go any further, you should get your soil tested. It’s the only way to really know what your soil needs and what it doesn’t. Once you get your test results back you can go about restoring the proper balance of nutrients.

For acidic soil, to raise your calcium levels, you could apply some lime. Dolomitic lime contains lots of calcium and magnesium. Other types of lime are also great sources of calcium. It’s not a good idea to indiscriminately apply lime though. Apply the proper amount based on your test results.

Too much dolomitic lime and your soil could actually end up with too much magnesium, which isn’t much better than not having enough. Soil nutrients are kind of like vitamins. Not enough isn’t good. Too much of some types can be toxic.

Don’t apply lime of any kind if your soil is alkaline.

For alkaline soil, gypsum is a great source of calcium and sulfur. Other types of rock powder, like greensand or rock phosphate can also be really beneficial to your soil. Not only do they provide calcium and magnesium, they also supply plenty of other trace minerals which transfer through the plants into your food. Unless your soil doesn’t show any mineral deficiencies when tested, you should apply a good load of rock powder to your garden once every five years.

Because most farmland and garden soil are deficient of a wide range of minerals, adding some rock powder garden supplements may not only eliminate major nutrient deficiencies in your garden, they’ll take care of your trace minerals too.

And you can always apply sulfur and magnesium individually. Another good source of minerals many people overlook is tree leaves. When the leaves fall off the trees in the autumn, collect as many as you can. Trees pull up minerals from the subsoil through their deep root systems and deposit many of the minerals in their leaves.

Mulch, add compost, and if needed…sulfur, calcium, and magnesium

So mulch with some leaves, and compost the rest. Your garden will love you for it.

By using liberal amounts of organic compost, mulching with leaves, and judicious application of other organic garden amendments like rock powder, your garden should never suffer from deficiencies of the ‘3 other major nutrients’ your garden needs and nobody ever told you about.

August 5, 2010

Composting Backyard Gardener-style: How to compost when you live in town

Filed under: Composting,Newsletter Archive — Perry Droast @ 11:45 pm

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Tomato Invasion Newsletter #5


The type of composting that works best when you live in town on a small or normal sized lot must be adapted for your circumstances. If you live on a farm or have a very large area devoted to your garden and your compost pile, then you have a lot more options available to you.

When you live on a quarter acre or smaller, efficient use of space becomes paramount. Through the years I’ve adapted and improved my methods specifically for backyard gardening. Not only that, my garden has typically been confined to a few small beds along with other more traditional planting beds most people would plant flowers or small shrubs in.

We love the fresh produce straight out of the garden. However we also have three dogs that need space to play and our current house has a swimming pool as well. So my garden shares the yard, it doesn’t take up the whole place.

So when it comes time to collect enough material to build a new compost pile, I’ve learned to plan ahead and make good use of all the plant material my yard provides.

Plan your composting year

Why would you need to plan your composting year? Because when you garden in town and don’t have a great deal of material to work with much of the year, you need to plan ahead.

I typically build two compost piles a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. Depending on my compost needs I’ll add another one into the mix, usually in the fall.

Build a pile in the fall for your spring planting

The easiest time to get plenty of free compost material is the fall. Our town has lots of trees and piles of leaves appear everywhere in the fall. The city comes around once a week and collects them.

As long as you get there first, they’re free for the taking. In years past, I’ve taken whole pickup truck loads of leaves in front of houses of complete strangers and never once has anyone stop me or even asked why I want the leaves. They obviously don’t know how valuable their leaves are or they would use them to build their own compost pile.

My own tree in the front yard supplies enough leaves for about half a compost pile in the fall. Unfortunately the second tree is a eucalyptus and the leaves aren’t appropriate to compost. Not only that, eucalyptus leaves fall in small amounts all year round instead of all at once like a typical deciduous tree.

No eucalyptus or walnut leaves please!

Eucalyptus contains oils not compatible with most plants. Walnut leaves are another type you don’t want in your pile. Walnut leaves contain juglone and are toxic to many types of plants although some plants don’t seem to have any problem growing under or near walnut trees.

There’s a good article found here, http://www.pubs.ext.vt.edu/430/430-021/430-021.html from the Virginia Cooperative Extension including information on plants that tolerate juglone as well as plants that can be stunted or even killed by it.

I also prune my shiny xylosma bushes in the fall and shred the branches with the leaves still attached. This gives me quite a bit of green material to add to the pile along with the fallen leaves.

The fall pile is now built. And the compost should be ready to use in the spring.

Build a spring pile for your winter garden

Because I live in California in zone 8, I grow a winter garden. My wife likes the winter garden better than the summer garden. It’s easier to take care of and we grow lots of fun stuff like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, onions, and my favorite, brussels sprouts.

So in the spring, I’m planning for the late summer/fall planting season. For that, I need compost.

So I prune my xylosma again, collect the leaves that have accumulated underneath, and prune the potato bush. I get enough material from three xylosma and one potato bush to build a decent sized compost pile twice a year. That along with the leaves they drop through the year along with a large arbor covered with star jasmine that also gets pruned twice a year, I get a great deal of compost material from my own yard.

As I rotate flowers through the planting beds I compost the ones I’ve pulled out as well.

As you can see, a few mature bushes can really give you almost all the compost material you need.

In mid-winter, at least what we call mid-winter, which is late December or early January, I trim the trees and the grapes. I shred all this material too, layering it into the fall pile as I turn it. Winter is a good time for me to add grass clippings into the pile too.

In the summer, my lawn has bermuda, crab grass, weeds, and all kinds of undesirable elements I don’t like to put in my compost pile. My lawn was already in this condition when we bought the house and I haven’t applied much effort to fix it. I’m not interested in re-sodding the yard so we live with it for now.

But in the winter, the only grass that grows is the dwarf tall fescue which is a perfect addition to the compost pile. High in nitrogen, no seeds, and decomposes quickly too.

Build another pile if you need it

Because I have a three-bin compost system in my backyard, I can have two piles going at once if I really need it. If you really need more compost then go ahead and build another pile.

Here’s where getting creative may not be enough. You may need to buy some material to build your pile if you don’t have access to enough free materials from friends and neighbors.

Quick and dirty way to build a compost pile for around $10

Typically, I don’t like to pay for compost material and I don’t usually recommend it either. However, if you just plain run out of options, there is a cheap and reliable way to get enough material to build a pile.

Locate your local feed store and buy a bale of hay and a bale of straw. Around here, hay is alfalfa and a good source of green material high in nitrogen. Straw is a good brown or carbon material. I would recommend shredding the straw somewhat as it can be a little too coarse for easy decomposition in the pile.

Hay usually costs $8 to $15 a bale, and straw is typically less. So for around $10 to $20 you can build a nice compost pile. I would recommend only using about half the bale of hay or your pile may have too much nitrogen and get out of balance.

Go to Starbucks and fill’er up

What? You read right. Go down to your local Starbucks or other local coffee vendor and ask for the spent coffee grounds. Coffee grounds are high in nitrogen and break down fast in your pile. Other restaurants may be willing to save their vegetable scraps for you,  but you better be ready, because they may give you so much material, you can’t utilize it all.

Good planning means compost available when you need it

By planning your composting activities for the whole year, you should be more than able to take care of all your compost needs. You really don’t need to write it down on the calendar, just remember to build a pile when the leaves fall in the autumn, and another one in the spring. Simple and effective.

You may have to adapt to a colder climate than I do so you will need to adjust the timing to suit your area. As a last resort, you can probably find organic compost at your local nursery. The nursery I go to carries it. I’ve used it in the past when planting shrubs and trees. I probably wouldn’t use it in my food garden though. I’m not a trusting soul when it comes to “organic” compost. I like to make my own.

This system helps me adapt to a small yard without having to resort to buying materials for my own composting needs.

July 30, 2010

How To Save Your Tomatoes Before a Hard Frost

Filed under: Newsletter Archive,Tomatoes — Perry Droast @ 11:29 pm

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Tomato Invasion Newsletter #4

“A hard frost is coming tonight.”

The weather reporter didn’t say maybe. It’s getting cold. Tonight.

The reporter didn’t tell you to get out and save your tomatoes. He should have.

What happens to tomatoes during a hard frost?

Tomatoes can make it through a little light frost as long as it doesn’t last all night. A hard frost can and will kill the plant. And if the plant burns down under a hard frost, it’s not likely you can save your tomatoes either.

I’ve seen tomato plants destroyed completely in one night of hard frost. And I’ve seen a tomato plant survive into February because it was grown right next to the house. The house moderated the temperature, creating a slightly warmer micro-climate than the general winter air, protecting the plant. I left it in the ground hoping the tomatoes would get ripe. They didn’t.

How do you save your tomatoes from a hard frost?

There are two things you can do immediately to save at least some of your tomatoes left on the bush late in the season.

Harvest any of the tomatoes that show any red or pink. Place them in a paper bag along with an apple and keep them on the kitchen counter. These should ripen up in a few days. Check them every day because they can over-ripen quickly if you let them. The apple releases ethylene gas which hastens the ripening process.

Pull your plants out of the ground, carefully shake the excess dirt off the roots and hang the plants upside down in the garage or garden shed. Anywhere it won’t get below freezing works although warmer is better. It’s probably too warm inside the house though. The tomatoes that are already fairly mature and dark green will probably ripen all the way to red. The tomatoes that are only pale green may not ever ripen.

Why bother saving them?

The main reason I try to save them is because late in the season, most tomatoes don’t get ripe anyway. So we’ve already eaten most of the fresh tomatoes we’ve harvested and we’re just hoping for a few more before the cold weather hits.

These late season tomatoes often have wonderful flavor. I’ve never read or heard anyone else say it, but I think a couple light frosts help bring out and enhance the flavor of the late tomatoes. Here in Central California we don’t usually get a hard frost until December, though that’s certainly not a hard-and-fast rule.

We typically don’t get ripe tomatoes after late October or early November depending on the weather. You’ll need to study some weather records or talk to an old-time gardener in your area to find out how late you can expect to harvest ripe tomatoes. Once you’ve hit that date, every ripe tomato you get from then on is a treasure to be savored.

What if you don’t have the space to hang a bunch of tomato plants?

You can always pick the darkest green tomatoes along with the red-tinged ones and put them in the paper bag too. I’ve had some success ripening the dark green ones. They may not have quite the same flavor as vine-ripened tomatoes though.

If you only have room to hang a few plants so the tomatoes can ripen on the vine, you’ll have to pick your favorite plants and give up on the rest. So once you’ve chosen the few you’ll hang in garage, pick the rest of the tomatoes off the other plants, and place them in a paper bag or two along with an apple in each bag.

Some of the tomatoes in the bag will ripen and some won’t. The ones that do are like fudge icing on a chocolate cake. They make you feel special as you eat them.

Won’t the tomatoes rot before you get to eat them?

It’s possible that some of the tomatoes could rot in the bag. By checking on the tomatoes in the bag daily, you’ll make sure that most of the tomatoes don’t rot. Removing the ripe tomatoes every day helps protect the rest of the tomatoes.

In the case of saving your late season tomatoes, there are only a few things to keep in mind. Make sure you watch the weather report nightly so you can get out and save your plants before they get permanently damaged by a hard frost. Clear a place in the garage so you can hang your plants upside down when it’s time to do so. And make sure you have a couple paper bags and some apples on hand to force the last of your late season tomatoes to ripen.

And you could always take a couple of the last tomatoes that ripen by the TV station so the weather reporter will think of all those not-yet-ripened tomatoes before the first hard frost and give fair warning to all those gardeners out there hoping for one more ripe tomato.

July 29, 2010

Don’t Let Tomato Hornworms Ruin Your Tomato Harvest

Filed under: Garden Pests,Newsletter Archive — Tags: , — Perry Droast @ 11:00 pm

[ad#Adsense top left post]Tomato Invasion Newsletter #3

Crush ’m, Cut ‘m, or Dunk ‘m…Before the Green Monsters Destroy Your Garden

Tomato and tobacco hornworms wreak havoc on your tomato plants in short order if you let them. They’ll eat the leaves, green tomatoes, and start on the branches if left alone. And they grow fast. I don’t think they ever stop eating. They seem to grow an inch a day or more and they get a big around as your thumb.

Today I found two of them munching happily on my prized heirloom Cherokee Purple tomato plant. Without thinking I picked off the first one I spotted and immediately crushed it with a handy rock. Then I spotted the second one and picked it off the plant too.

Then I decided to take some photos so I put it back on the plant and ran to find my camera. When I got back he was upside down headed for cover. I took a few photos before crushing him right next to his buddy.

There’s a good way and a bad way to crush a hornworm

And you need to know the difference. If you momentarily lose your mind and toss them on the concrete sidewalk near your garden for easy and effective final rites, you’ll only do it once. The green stain doesn’t wash off easily and the remains of the caterpillar stick to the bottom of your shoe too. Hornworms are very squishy, full of green liquified slime, and hard to crush by hand. So my first reaction was to crush them on the nearest sidewalk. I only did that once.

As you may be able to tell, my favored method of ridding my garden of hornworms is death by crushing. It sounds terrible but it’s not. At least for me it’s not. For them, at least it’s quick. There always seem to be a rock or dirt clod big enough to place on top of the hornworm so I can do a quick and painless crushing. I do it right in the dirt of the garden figuring they ate part of my garden so now what’s left of them can feed it.

If it sounds too gruesome you may need to have someone else in the family assigned to hornworm patrol. Because tomato or tobacco hornworms don’t discriminate. They’ll eat your tomato plants to sticks if you let them. And hornworms eat anything in the nightshade family like potatoes and peppers too.

Hornworms eat anything in the nightshade family

Here’s a rundown of the common plants hornworms eat. Just about any member of the nightshade or potato family will do. This includes datura (jimson weed), mandrake, deadly nightshade (belladonna), capsicum (paprika, chili pepper), potato, tobacco, tomato, eggplant and even petunias.

Personally, I’ve never seen them eat anything except tomatoes and peppers. I grow petunias almost every year and I’ve never seen a horn worm munching on one. I included it because if you don’t have any of their preferred food, they’ll just as gladly eat what you’ve got.

Braconid wasps help control hornworms

Fortunately, there are a couple ways to help control the tobacco and tomato hornworm. The parasitic braconid wasp lays its eggs in the hornworm which provides the larvae a perfect environment grow and develop. If you see a bunch of white egg-shaped pods on the back of a hornworm don’t crush it. Pick it off the plant and place the hornworm in a glass jar with the lid off. It should allow the hornworm to live long enough for the larvae to hatch out and go find some more hornworms so they can procreate like their parents did.

When braconid wasp larvae mature and leave the hornworm, the hornworm dies so it won’t turn into a moth which is of course what all good (and in this case – bad) caterpillars do. In this case, the natural biological process helps control the spread of this voracious pest in your garden.

Control hornworms using biological control – BT

You can also stop the hornworm from destroying your tomatoes and peppers by spraying a natural biological control Bacillus thuringiensis, var. kurstaki (BT) sold in good garden centers or found online. BT won’t stop full-sized caterpillars from eating though it controls small ones quite well. Once you apply BT on your your plants, the worms eat it along with the plant. Once they’ve eaten a little, the BT causes them to stop feeding and they eventually starve without reproducing.

BT is effective against a wide range of garden worm pests so if you’re spraying your tomatoes and peppers, go ahead and spray the rest of your garden too. Pay special attention to your brassicas like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, bok choy, among others. Because the brassicas often attract cabbage worms and cabbage loopers the BT will protect them as well.

The no-crush way to humanly kill a hornworm…

And any other garden pest you can hand pick too. Make up a small pail of soapy water using dishwashing detergent. Drop any pest including any hornworms you catch into the water and the soap makes sure they won’t swim out and re-invade your garden.

Because hornworms get big fast, handpicking is the general method I use to control them in my garden. I go on a daily patrol checking my plants thoroughly.

How to spot a hornworm…

The method I use to find hornworms is three-fold.

Look for obvious leaf and fruit damage…hornworms grow fast and eat almost continuously leaving lots of obvious damage in their wake.

Look for hornworm droppings…hornworms leave dark green (almost black in appearance) droppings on the leaves and ground below where they are munching. They don’t take time out to look for a toilet.

Look for the hornworms themselves…this can be a little tough because they are camouflaged extremely well.

How do I know if I have tobacco hornworms or tomato hornworms?

Hornworms are very easy to tell apart. A tobacco hornworm has seven diagonal white slash marks on its side and a red tipped tail appendage. A tomato hornworm has eight v-shaped marks on its side and a black tipped tail.

Knowing the difference won’t change how you protect your garden from this pest though. Both types of hornworms eat the same plants for the most part and they look very similar to the untrained eye. And they both eat like, well – hornworms, and can quickly wreak havoc on your tomatoes if you don’t watch out.

That ugly thing tried to bite me!

Yep, that’s what it looks like when you grab a hornworm. If you’re afraid of getting bit, just make sure you grab them just behind the head as you pull them off the plant. Watch out for your plant too as you pull them off.

Their little legs (that’s what I call them) grab  onto the plant very well. So don’t just grab and yank. Pull them off the plant in a controlled manner and hold onto the plant if it looks like the plant will break as you pull.

It is a little disconcerting at first to grab them though because they certainly appear to be trying to bite you. So I grab them behind the head and they simply can’t reach me that way. And they can’t really bite you anyway. Their mandibles are small and can’t do any real damage to your hand.

If you really don’t want to touch them, carry a pair of garden scissors and just cut them in half. It’s a little messy but you don’t have to touch them and they won’t grow into two worm either. Or use a stick to pick them off the plant and toss on the bird feeder. Your local bird population will love the organic fare you’ve provided.

Hornworms life cycle means 2 to 4 rounds depending on your climate

If you live in Florida, you may see as many as four different rounds of hornworms munching and crunching through your garden. That goes for any place with warm and long growing seasons. In colder climates, two life cycles are more typical.

No matter. It’s not hard to control them as long as you go on a daily or at least every other day patrol. You need to pick your ripe tomatoes anyway so take a quick look around for the telltale signs of hornworm infestation as you pick.

If you see hornworm damage, don’t panic

Simply find the camouflaged worm and get it out of your garden. You can crush them like me. Or feed them to the birds if you have a feeder. Give them a soapy water bath, or cut them in two.

Your plants will recover. And you’ll still get to enjoy all those wonderful tomatoes.

July 9, 2010

How To Avoid Blossom End Rot While Growing Tomatoes.

Filed under: Newsletter Archive,Tomatoes — Perry Droast @ 10:59 pm

[ad#Adsense top left post]Tomato Invasion Newsletter #2

From a distance an iceberg floating out in a bay doesn’t look all that big. Floating serenely, the sun glinting off its surface, moving slowly with the tide, an iceberg makes its way out to sea. There’s no sign warning about the danger lurking below the surface, only the beauty shining above.

From a distance, I thought my tomatoes were all beautiful too, just like that iceberg. As I got a little closer look though, some blossom end rot became visible. One tomato had a dime-sized brown spot on the blossom end (opposite the stem) of the tomato and the other was worse. After cutting into the tomatoes, they both ended up in the compost bucket, uneaten. They both had extensive ugly rotten areas inside. If I hadn’t already seen blossom end rot in other gardens, I might have been surprised by this. Unfortunately, I’ve seen it a few times in the last 30 years.

What is blossom end rot?
Blossom end rot causes the fruit of tomato, pepper, and eggplant to rot on the inside, starting with a dime-sized or smaller brown or tan spot on the end of the fruit opposite the stem (the blossom end). On tomatoes, it shows up right on the blossom end of the fruit. On peppers, it shows up on the side near the blossom end. Blossom end rot often ends up as an ugly black spot on the fruit, up to half the size of the entire fruit.

It’s easy to lose over half your crop to blossom end rot. While there are things you can do to alleviate the problem and make it go away, prevention really is the best plan.

Why does blossom end rot start?
Calcium deficiency causes blossom end rot. In order for the cells of the fruit to grow properly, they need lots of calcium. If calcium isn’t drawn up by the plant’s roots and moved up through the plant all the way to the fruit, blossom end rot results.

This doesn’t mean your soil doesn’t have calcium in abundance. It may simply not be available for your plants to use due to other mineral deficiencies. Or the plant may not be receiving  enough water. Tomatoes require regular deep watering. Tomatoes don’t like to go totally dry before the next watering either.

When does blossom end rot show up?
Most of the time, if your tomatoes or peppers are going to get blossom end rot, it shows up right away, on the first fruit of the season. Although this can be disappointing, it’s best to get your wake-up call early. The sooner you know what’s going on, the sooner you can start taking care of the problem.

It really doesn’t matter when blossom end rot shows up though. The cure is always the same thing. Although it’s best to prevent blossom end rot, if it shows up despite your best efforts, you need a plan set in place ahead of time so you can leap into action immediately.

Can you get rid of blossom end rot once it starts?
You can try. Ask four different organic gardeners how they deal with blossom end rot, and you’ll probably end up with four different ways to get rid of it. I’ve got my own way of dealing with it. My plan seems to work for me. It may or may not work for you, based on your local soil conditions.

First, I make sure I deep water every 4 to 6 days. More often if it’s extremely hot, less often if the weather has been mild. Before I water, I dig down with my hand 3 or 4 inches into the soil near each tomato plant. If it’s still moist, I wait a day and check again, in another spot. Tomatoes like even deep watering. They don’t like to get thirsty and they don’t like wet feet either. That means you need good drainage in the area you plant your tomatoes.

Next, I give them a good spray with some liquid kelp early in the morning. The plants absorb the micro-nutrients quickly this way. Liquid kelp doesn’t contain calcium so it’s not going to fix the problem all on its own. However it does help feed the plant other needed nutrients. Think of it like giving the plant it’s vitamins. One day of vitamins won’t do much. Regular applications boost the health of the plants.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. If you have some Tomatoes Alive organic fertilizer from Gardens Alive, feed some to your tomatoes now. The new version of Tomatoes Alive has some added calcium and magnesium. Just what the plant doctor ordered. If you don’t, you need to get some organic fertilizer with added calcium into the soil around your plants right away.

And finally, you need to make some compost tea if you don’t have a batch ready, and spray your tomatoes, early in the morning. In fact, you can mix in the liquid kelp and give your plants a double-boost all in one shot.

Unfortunately, contrary to popular belief, foliar application of calcium probably won’t help. The plant actually needs to draw the calcium up through the root system, all the way out to the fruit. This is because the entire plant needs calcium in order to grow new cells properly. That means the stems, the flowers, the branches, and the fruit.

Even if you do all the steps listed above, you still may lose 50% or more of your fruit to blossom end rot. Once the conditions are in place for it to happen, it’s hard to combat. You’re much better off preventing blossom end rot in the first place. However, don’t give up. Due to our long growing season in the San Joaquin Valley of California where I live, even when I’ve lost up to three weeks harvest, eventually the plants recover and produce good fruit the rest of the growing season.

I’ve heard reports of people grinding up calcium tablets and digging them into the soil under the plants. I’m thinking you would be better off picking up a bag of ground oyster shells from the feed store and trying that. I’ve not used either myself. If you choose to do either of these things, I’d love to hear how it works. Leave a comment below or email me using the contact form.

How can blossom end rot be prevented?
By using a few simple strategies you should avoid blossom end rot altogether. First you need to get your soil tested. If you don’t test your soil, it’s like trying to lasso a pig in the dark. You know it’s out there and you keep tossing your rope. No matter how hard you try, you really don’t know which direction to toss it. Your chances of catching the pig are small to none.

If you don’t know what types of minerals and nutrients are in your soil and whether they are in the form your plants can take up, how do you know which types of nutrients to add to your soil? You don’t. So go ahead and find out what your soil really needs by taking a sample to a lab for testing.

How can I make sure my plants get plenty of calcium they can actually use?
There are few things you can do in order to make sure your soil has enough calcium for your plants.

Maintain your soil pH around 6.5. If you have acidic soil in your garden, add some lime. It’s full of calcium and increases the ratio of calcium to other competitive ions making it more available for your plants.

If your soil is alkaline like mine in California you don’t want to add lime. Instead add some pelletized gypsum. It’s loaded with calcium and balanced by some sulphur. In theory, it’s pH neutral. In practice, I think it lowers the pH of my soil, which is a good thing. Now my soil will never get all the way down to 6.5, but I simply can’t worry about it. As long as I know my soil has enough calcium and magnesium so my plants grow well and I don’t see any blossom end rot, I’m happy.

If you were using chemical fertilizers, which I don’t recommend, I would tell you to use nitrate nitrogen fertilizer, not ammonium nitrogen fertilizer. Excess ammonium ions reduce the uptake of calcium into your plants, contributing to blossom end rot. And no matter what type of fertilizer you use, organic or chemical, don’t over-fertilize tomatoes. You’ll end up with a ton of plant growth and no fruit.

And last but not least, avoid drought stress at all costs. Water at least one inch to one and half inches of water a week. I’d rather check the soil and water when the plant needs it. I find in my area of Central California where it gets above 100℉ for a good part of the summer, I need to water every 3 to 6 days. I water deeply without saturating the soil.

But I’ve never seen blossom end rot in my garden. Why worry?
If you’ve never experienced blossom end rot, that’s great. However, it’s always smart to be aware of what causes it and how to prevent it. Because by implementing the basic soil preparation strategies talked about in this article, your plants will continue to thrive and hopefully you’ll never see blossom end rot in your garden.

And if you do end up experiencing blossom end rot in your garden, you’ll know why it’s occurring and how to deal with it.

Summary…
Just knowing what blossom end rot is helps a great deal if you see it in your garden or a friend’s. By recognizing it, and knowing that a calcium deficiency causes it, you’re miles ahead of the average gardener. Of course, you’ll be able to tell your friend exactly the steps to take so they can get back on the road to ripe juicy tomatoes that look and taste great.

Remember, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Keep a bag of lime or gypsum around (based on your soil type) so you can treat your soil to the proper dose regularly. Doing this one thing can help ensure you’ll never see blossom end rot again in your own garden.

Just like a beautiful iceberg, even though your garden appears perfect above the ground, it’s what’s going on under the surface of the soil that really matters. As long as you know how to avoid possible danger lurking beneath the surface, you’ll be able to enjoy the view and the fruits of your labor too.

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