Blossom End Rot affects tomatoes, peppers and aubergines.

Light brown patches develop at the flower end of the fruit. Eventually the base of the fruit flattens, becomes a brown concave shape, but remains hard.

Blossom End Rot

• is a physiological disorder, not a disease.
• develops if the growing medium is allowed to dry out while the fruits are swelling.
• is more common, in container grown plants, particularly grow bags.
• follows inadequate, or uneven, watering, which causes an imbalance of potash and calcium in the compost.
• may be prevented by watering twice a day, in small amounts.

Some varieties of Tomato are more susceptible to Blossom End Rot than others - particularly Alicante. Small fruited tomatoes & plum tomatoes do not seem to get blossom end rot.

Once a fruit is affected there is no way of curing it.

To stop further occurrence of Blossom End Rot:

• make sure compost never dries out

• water little and often.

• use growpots

• apply calcium nitrate as a foliar feed

• do not overfeed with tomato feed

To find out more about this book on tomato diseases click the image:

Blossom end rot is a condition which can ruin the tomato, pepper or aubergine crop, but it can be stamped out by improving the growing methods.

disease tomato