OK...so my technique of pruning my tomato plants have been favorable as I have quite a lot of fruit coming in. The problem is, as they started to ripen, many of them became rotten on the bottom. This happened to me last year too, for the first batch, but then it got better. In talking with the Gardner and describing these symptoms to him, he suggested Blossom-End Rot. So I google it and indeed there it is! So reasons for this are as follows:
One year I saved egg shells and then I put them in the soil around my tomatoes. Think I'll need to to that next year to help with the calcium. As for watering, could have been due to the heavy rains we had in the spring. But for dryness, I suppose mulching around the plants would keep the soil moist. Next year though, I'm going to put in a drip system.
- Shortage in calcium in the soil
- Improper watering
- Too much nitrogen in the soil.
In other news, peas have been harvested and I planted a new batch for the fall. I also planted lettuce for the fall as well.
And I'll NEVER do pumpkins again. At least not in my small garden plot. They over-took the rest of my ground fruits and then turned around and rotted. (hmmm...maybe they rotted because of the same reason my tomatoes got end rot.)
Hopefully you're still getting plenty of tomatoes! We had a different kind of tomato rot the other day. The kind that happens when you leave them sitting on the counter because there's no room in the fridge. Looks like we need to get out or canning books pronto.
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