Every year I plant 12 tomatoes, of 3 or 4 varieties, along the side of my garage. Though every year is different, there are always enough tomatoes to make it worthwhile.
Until this year. The plants are short and spindly, with not a lot of leaves. The tomatoes are deformed and are ripening from the bottom up. By the time the top ripens the bottom is rotting. The few that I’ve picked don’t have much taste.
I’ve watered them and fertilized them and sprayed them the same as any other year. The weather hasn’t been out of the ordinary; even in years with bad weather, I’ve still never had a crop this bad.
You need to rotate your crops. The soil is completely depleted from your planting tomatoes there year after year. You should plant tomatoes in a different place every year.
My tomato plants are not what they ought to be, too. I plant “Celebrity”, which variety typically produces a big, fat bushy plant and ridiculous quantities of tomatoes. Three plants keep me swimming in fruit all summer. Every winter I add chicken manure, rice hulls and bone meal to my planting beds and let them lie idle for a few months. But this year’s plants? They’re kind of sparse and open, letting sun beat down on the fruit which has burned up a lot of them. They also did not produce a lot of fruit to begin with. I’m bummed.
Hmm. Mine are doing fine, though they seem to be taking forever to ripen. But I have lots of fruit, and the ones that did ripen taste great.
I moved them to where the beans were last year, and added a bag of old horse poop compost, the compost I’d been accumulating for a couple of years, and some bags from the BFI giveaway.
My eggplants are doing great also.
It sounds to me like the OPs tomatoes have a disease.
My vines and fruit did really well, but it’s only the second year in that spot, and I worked in a lot of compost. I did have some problems early in the season with blossom end rot. It forms a large, black, lesion on the blossom end of the fruit. It’s not caused by a parasite, but by an imbalance in cations, notably a reduction in calcium. I blended up some eggshells, and fed them to the roots, and it went away.
Blossom end rot is usually an early season problem, and it probably would have gone away anyway, but the eggshells gave me something to do while I waited for it to go away by itself. The aggravating part about it is that the rot seems to stimulate ripening, so about 2/3 of the first dozen tomatoes had it.
gardenweb.com has a tomato forum that I’ve found to be usful in the past. (I think it spun off a child-forum or two, one of which specifically deals with pests and diseases.
Here you go: Growing Tomatoes Forum - GardenWeb
Tomatoes that fail to ripen at the stalk end may be suffering from something called greenback; usually caused by poor feeding (insufficient Potassium) and/or too much direct sunlight.
I’m another who is wondering about the quality of the soil.
My tomato garden gets a good working-in of compost, manure, and loam each year. This way, I get a nice crop from my plants. I like cherry tomatoes, and mine are already coming in by the hundreds.
Now, mind you, I live in a climate where growing tomatoes can be an iffy proposition, but with good soil, I can usually get a huge crop before the first fall frost. But if I didn’t have rich soil, I’d have some real trouble.
I’d suggest trying next year, but enriching the garden plot with nutrients before planting. See if that helps.
I believe twickster is correct here. We had wonderful results the first two years we planted tomatoes, then they quickly developed a host of issues. We started rotating locations and since then, things have been fine. We also avoid planting any of the other common nightshade family plants (eggplant, peppers, potatoes) in the same spots, as they seem to suffer from the same nutrient imbalance(s) as well. We also work in compost, but the rotation seemed to have the most impact. This year’s crop is spectacular.
Oh, fellow NE Ohio gardner…what you describe sounds like blossom end rot . We’ve had prime conditions for it this summer, namely alternating periods of blistering heat and drenching rain.
If it’s blossom end rot, the good news is that it’s not a pathogen causing the problem. There’s always next year…
Yeah, we had some blossom end rot problems earlier in the season, and a calcium solution fixed the problem pretty quickly.
We also, with the very high temperatures and clear days, have had some problems with sun scald, which doesn’t make the tomato inedible, but does put a blister on the skin where it is exposed to the sun. And, because it often results from lack of shade caused by limited foliage, sun scald can sometimes indicate other problems with the plant.
The blossom end rot may be accurate, and I’ve had some myself this year, but I don’t think that accounts for the spindly plants with not a lot of leaves. There are probably multiple causes to this problem.
Indeed. There may be a “post hoc ergo propter hoc” factor at work here. The spindly plants with not a lot of leaves likely has nothing to do with the rotting fruit. But “spindly and few leaves” is proabaly contributing to sunscald and does indicate other underlying problems.
Erma Bombeck - Humorist - The grass is always greener over the septic tank.
Me - I have observed this is true for tomatoes too, though you shouldn’t eat them.
In my experience, bloosom end rot tends to manifest as a fairly dryish brown concavity at the blossom end of the fruit. I still think the OP is more accurately describing greenback - the fruits ripen unevenly, starting at the blossom end; if you try to leave them long enough for the top to ripen, the lower part of the fruit will turn over ripe and start to rot.
I’ve heard of the rotating plant strategy, but unfortunately, I only have two raised beds where I can grow vegetables. I’ve always grown tomatoes in both of them, for years. If I skip planting next summer, we’ll be completely tomato-less for the first summer in decades. Of course, I can buy them at the supermarket, but that’s heresy.
Maybe I’ll grow okra and habaneros next summer and get the tomatoes at farmer’s market.
Sounds like a compound set of problems here. I’d agree w/ the blossom or bloom rot as far as the ripening situation goes. However, the primary problem is probably poor soil. It’s too late to do much about it this year but try mulching the plants with grass clippings from your lawn. As far as next year is concerned, start a compost heap where the plants are now or move them. I’d say just start a compost pile and rake it out to cover the desired garden size and by next spring you should have a nice fertile spot. Try adding some earthworms to the heap. They’ll thrive and airiate the soil allowing the root system to grow. There’s a lot of natural ways to get good tomatoes. Good luck. (I never spray or use hormones)
If the sun is a problem, try topping the plants. In other words, prune the tops so the plant bushes out more. That’ll help put more shade on the fruit. Planting them closer together is a good idea in really hot/sunny climates, they help provide shade on each other. It’s also not a crime to provide shade to the garden. A mosquito net, like you’ve probably seen on greenhouses stretched atop the garden area (it could even be laid over the plants) is an easy thing to assemble or build and relatively inexpensive. I’ve got some purchased at the Dollar store for $10 apiece. They’re a camping item and easy to work with.
My main tomato garden has shade trees and a privacy fence on the north and west side to protect it against early cold snaps and dog days.
A misting type sprayer can be used on smaller gardens to help keep the heat down. Sometimes the tomatoes will rot because it’s just too damned hot. They’ll actually “stew” on the vine.
If your space is limited, consider spading the soil into a compost heap and adding new soil and amendments. Then in a year or two, if you’ve worked the compost heap, you can rotate. Failing that, at least look for a winter cover crop that fixes nitrogen in the soil.
