Outdoor Tomatoes and Blossom End Rot

Outdoor Tomatoes and Blossom End Rot

It is so hard, especially with the heatwave we were having until last week, to cope with watering the tomatoes properly. We have quite a number of containerized plants which also need watering, Brugmansias, which seem to wilt at every opportunity, and bananas. But the tomatoes, both inside and out, are very demanding indeed.

We have been dismayed to find grey/brown rot patches on the bottom of our tomato fruits, both inside the greenhouse and out, despite having bought blight-resistant varieties. We know we are in a blight area because we were told that by the previous owners. We assumed it was blight at first on the tomatoes, because there are some brown bits on the leaves as well, but we have been suspicious that maybe it is not tomato blight as the leaves and stems are little affected.

Anyway, we've now discovered that it is blossom end rot, which makes sense as it is at the end where the blossom is! The bad news is that it is a consequence of erratic watering, so I hope that more fruits won't be affected if we water well from now on. Lord knows we really did our best with the watering but it is so hard - we'll have to set up irrigation in future. The good news is that although I have sprayed them with Dithane fungicide anyway, it's not blight -yet. So with any luck we might yet get some ripe and edible tomatoes!