You can determine this by using a soil thermometer. It is also important the temperature of the soil is at least 60☏ before you plant your seedlings outside. If you don’t know when that is, you can find out in the Old Farmer’s Almanac. Wait until at least two weeks after your last frost date to plant them in your garden. While you will be eager to start your tomatoes in the spring, you may be setting them up for blossom-end rot if you plant in cold soil, or clay soil that you haven’t amended correctly. There are a number of cultural measures you can take to minimize the likelihood of being faced with deformed tomatoes at harvest time. Tomatoes that have been planted in cold soil may not develop robust root systems.Īlso, if the plants have been over-fertilized and have an abundance of foliage, they are more likely to develop blossom-end rot, as the leaves will compete with the fruit for calcium. Sometimes the calcium stalls in the stems or leaves, and never makes it to the developing fruit. However, this mode of delivery does not always evenly distribute the calcium throughout the plant. The roots take up calcium from the soil, and ideally the calcium is delivered throughout the plant by the passage of water, via the xylem. It is critical for tomatoes to have a well-developed root system. There are several possible reasons for this. You may wonder why the first tomatoes of the season, growing on plants that you have tenderly nurtured from seed or planted as seedlings, are rewarding you with damaged fruit. Heavy applications of nitrogen fertilizer.This is the process that happens when soft rot bacteria cause decay, but in this case, the plant causes itself to rot.Ĭonfused? Don’t worry, I’ll go into more detail below.Įven worse, once the tissue has started rotting, bacteria and fungi can invade and make it even more severe.įactors that affect the supply of calcium in a plant include: Without calcium to hold the pectin in the cell walls together, the cells turn to mush. It is critical that this nutrient be available to fruits while they are developing.Ĭalcium plays many roles in plant biology, but holding the cell walls together is a key one of these. I cannot overstate the importance of calcium to plants. While less common, this disorder can also afflict peppers, squash, watermelons, cucumbers, and eggplant. And cutting away the damaged portions is certainly less than ideal when you’d hoped to show off your homegrown crop in salads and on sandwiches. One small solace is that the rest of the fruit remains edible, but you certainly couldn’t sell it if that was your goal. Rather than being a disease caused by a bacterial or fungal pathogen, this is a physiological disorder caused by insufficient calcium uptake. What are indeterminate and determinate varieties of tomatoes? We have a guide that answers that very question.īlossom-end rot is more frequently seen in large plum or paste type cultivars, and is rarely a problem in small, cherry tomato varieties. In contrast, if you grow determinate varieties that produce all of their fruit early in the season, you are at risk of losing your whole crop. This is particularly true for indeterminate varieties, since they produce tomatoes until the end of the season. Often, this happens to the first tomatoes produced during the season, while those from later on may well be fine. It starts when the fruits are mature green and starting to ripen. If the lesions get large, they dry out and flatten, turning black and leathery. They rapidly grow larger and turn dark as the fruit ripen. The lesions start as small, water-soaked spots. However, fully ripe tomatoes can be put in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 days, but they'll taste best when brought back up to room temperature before eating.Blossom-end rot is the formation of lesions on the bottom of the fruit that can grow to cover as much as one-third to one-half of each tomato. Refrigerator temperatures will keep any unripe fruits from ripening properly. Waiting until fruit is fully ripe can mean giving up a portion of your harvest to pests like squirrels. To let immature fruit ripen further, wait until the fruit is mostly colored and twist or snip the fruit from the vine. Tomatoes that are fully green when harvested will never ripen properly, but you can use them in recipes as green tomatoes. If you have to pull hard, that's a sign the fruit isn't quite ready. The skin should be smooth and shiny, with a supple yet firm feel. Tomatoes are ready to harvest when fruits are good-sized and fully colored. Early-season tomatoes mature in 40 to 70 days, mid-season in 60 to 70 days, and late-season tomatoes in 80 to 100 days from planting. When to harvest tomatoes depends on whether you planted early, mid, or late-season tomatoes.
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