Tomatoes.....what is wrong with them?

Help......if anyone could tell me what is going on with my tomatoes, I would really appreciate it. Click on the picasa link below, (I haven't figured out how to insert a image straight on the forum).

I've thrown away about ten tomatoes all with the same problem.



https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/hnVUaGb9CWaBPZvM22bgcQ?feat=directlink

Well, the plants look OK, can you show pictures of the tomatoes or more details on why you can't eat them?

If you click on the picture below, it will take you to a couple more pictures.

What's wrong with my tomatoes?

Hmm, that looks like blossom end rot. Looks like your soil needs to be amended. I would add 2 crushed Tums tablets per plant and some Epsom salts to add calcium and magnesium, respectively.
Discard the tomatoes that already have the rot (so they don't use the energy of the plant) and the ones that come after that should be better.

GreenBlueberry wrote:Hmm, that looks like blossom end rot. Looks like your soil needs to be amended. I would add 2 crushed Tums tablets per plant and some Epsom salts to add calcium and magnesium, respectively.
Discard the tomatoes that already have the rot (so they don't use the energy of the plant) and the ones that come after that should be better.

I just knew that someone would know what to do!

Thank you for taking the time to respond and I will do exactly that!

Last year, for my tomatoes, it was only the first fruit cluster that had BER. For correction I used powdered milk and wood ash, about a small handful, around the base of the plant & scratched in.
Now, that being said, your mix could have all the nutrients the plant needs but those nutrients may be unavailable if your mix pH is not balanced.

Moved to "disease" subforum.

Birds are getting my tomatoes like crazy right now. They go for the bigger ones I've been waiting for. they even got a bunch of green ones today!

I have a huge problem with birds, too!
I made a framed square with PVC pipe and laid bird netting over it. It has seemed to work so far. I actually got a couple of tomatoes this morning. I'll have to think of something different when the winds come though.

Jun 14, 2011

Tiredmama, I might need to try something like that next year. So far the few tomatoes I have on the back wall have been left alone by the birds. The shade cloth is lower there and I am thinking they don't like going under there. Right now most of my plants are about as tall as I am and there are a lot of them. I didn't budget enough this month for much garden stuff. It will have to be a next year thing. I'm going to try and hang some old cds up or something shiny up to see if that might scare them away.

Duhh....would feeding the birds help? Like hanging seed and those bars of food in the wire basket?

Maybe if you fed them something they would leave YOUR food alone? Those wire baskets are like 2 bucks at walmart and the brick of food (I cant remember for the life of me what that is called) is like 97 cents. And seed is a bit pricey but you can by cheap feeders. I don't know maybe this is a dumb idea...you could take it down I guess if it didn't work or made your problem worse?

Just thinking...at midnight...that is dangerous for me.

Jen-just remembered! Suet! That is what the brick thing is called...Suet! (God I hope so anyway... )

It is suet but I wonder if it would just attract them more to the tasty fruit they like so much. Perhaps putting the suet 5 or more feet away from the garden would be more helpful? Just a thought.

I'm having some BER issues too and noted in other forums the TUMS tablet recommendations. Would these tablets be best applied by "melting" them in water and pouring the water into the soil? Or is it better to just break up the tablets into power and sprinkle the powder?

Hi Middlemama!!

I have a question about this too, because I'd like to prevent BER on what tomatoes manage to set in this cool spring we're having in CO. I could be totally off base on this - it's been a few years - but the calcium in Tums is in the form of CaCO₃, which is very, very insoluble in water. The tablet itself dissolves, but the CaCo₃ would stay solid. The reason it can break into CO₃ to buffer acid in the stomach is the presence of the acid - the stomach has a pH of about 2 and the H+ forces the reactions to happen by sheer concentration. I don't think neutral water has anywhere near enough free H+ ions to do this, so I can't see how the calcium ever ends up free for the plant to use?

Unless it has its own process to break up the CaCO₃? Does anyone know what the basis of the Tums treatment is?

I add about a Tablespoon each of both Epsom salts and powdered milk to each hole before I plant my toms.

I put crushed up tums around the base of each plant and then circled them with epsom salt. The tomatoes improved over time but the blackened bottoms did not completely go away. Then the heat got to the plants.

I have not had any luck with tomato plants for the last year. But I'm not giving up. I am going to plant some in a few weeks, once the weather gets below 100.


The bird tent did help keep the birds away, it was a little bit of a pain to deal with. I have a neighbor that has bird seed out and her yard is always swarming with birds. The birds here are SOOO bad. I live a block away from a dairy and a few yards away from a vacant field which has corn planted annually. They are in my yard no matter whether I attract them or not. They bath and play in my sprinklers. I have hanging CD's, wind chimes, colorful ribbons hanging and I topped off a tree that had several birds nests. I kind of think that if I encouraged them with bird feed then I might as well start giving them names.

Birds are a great asset for gardens. They eat their weight and more in insects on a daily basis, so I like to encourage them. They like their berries so if you have blueberries or strawberries, you'll want to cover them with netting or netted hoops to keep the berries safe. Last year the birds ate my whole harvest of strawberries and this year, because I wasn't fast enough, they cleaned out my few blueberries instead. I managed to get almost 5 qts of strawberries from mine this year since I'd covered them with netting.

I had some tomatoes at the comm garden with BE Rot the beginning of this month and added a handful of dried milk to the base of each plant. The ones with the rot won't get better so I just pull those off, but the newer, younger toms came thru without the BER in the next weeks.

Etherati, you are correct about the tomatoes not being able to utilized the calcium from the Tums. The best solution is powdered milk and epsom salts. I've used it when I plant and then once a month, I put a tbs of each around the tomato roots and also my pepper plants and water. I've had absolutely no blossom end rot this year and my tomatoes have been big and beautiful.

The BER trouble persists in my tomato bed. I am going to apply crushed limestone this fall after garden cleanup. @ $6 for 50lbs, it is more economical than the powdered milk I have used the last 2 years. My county Ag agent says it is a more accessible calcium for the plants as well. I am applying it in the fall because it takes some months for it to break down. I am tired of BER.