When you decide to grow big juicy tasty tomatoes, you must be prepared to deal with the occasional problem. Although it’s not difficult to grow big juicy tomatoes, sometimes Mother Nature throws us a curve ball and we need to be prepared to handle it. Here are five common tomato problems and tips to deal with them so you will end up with the best big juicy tomatoes in the neighborhood.
Blossom End Rot: This one hits all of us eventually. Although it may seem devastating, it’s not. Blossom end rot looks like a dark colored, rotten spot on the bottom of the tomato fruit. It may actually get big enough to cover the bottom half of the tomato. You may think your tomato plant has been hit with some horrible disease but that’s not the case at all. Blossom end rot is caused by a lack of calcium and may also affect watermelon, peppers and squash. Sometimes blossom end rot is caused by a soil deficiency but it’s more likely that the plant simply can’t absorb the calcium that’s already there. This is common when the soil moisture is inconsistent. Keep the soil evenly moist by watering regularly. Use a mulch of straw or shredded bark to help conserve the moisture and you should see an end to blossom end rot. In the event that this doesn’t work, save your eggshells from breakfast, whirl them in the blender with a bit of water until they’re as fine as possible and then water your tomato plants with this. And don’t forget to mulch!
Cracked Tomatoes: Another disaster in the garden, or so it would appear. First of all, remember that a cracked tomato is still a big juicy tasty tomato. It just isn’t as pretty. A cracked tomato is perfectly edible if you pick it right away. Left on the vine, a cracked tomato will attract ants, flies and other insects. The cause of cracks in tomatoes is simply that the ripening tomato tried to take up too much water too quickly. This happens when the tomato fruit is nearly ripe and we get a sudden summer storm. All that water… and no way to use it. A ripe tomato’s skin isn’t as elastic as a green tomato’s and so the skin simply splits rather than stretching. Be sure to keep your tomatoes evenly moist at all times and use a mulch to conserve the moisture. If the tomato isn’t stressed due to a lack of water, it will be better able to handle that big storm.
Curling Leaves on Tomato Plants: Leaves that curl inward on an otherwise healthy tomato plant are a sign of self-defense. The tomato plant will curl the leaves in an attempt to conserve moisture by exposing less leaf surface to the sun. Once again, the problem that causes curling leaves on tomato plants is uneven watering. The soil must be kept evenly moist and mulched. Temperatures between 85 and 90 degrees seem to trigger the curling of the leaves, perhaps because the heat increases the plant’s demand for more water. A good deep soaking will uncurl the leaves quickly.
Flowers Drop Without Setting Fruit: Although tomatoes are summer crops and require heat to fruit and ripen, they don’t like hot nights. When the temperature at night stays above 75 degrees, the blossoms will drop and no fruit will develop. Daytime temperatures above 95 can also cause this problem because then, it changes the chemical composition of the pollen so that it won’t fertilize the flowers. The only thing you can do when this happens is to remember next season to plant a few different varieties of tomatoes. Plant some that mature and ripen early, some for mid-season and some that take longer to reach maturity. Also, stagger the plantings so that you don’t have all of them blooming at the same time.
No Flowers or Blossoms Forming: If you have a huge, beautiful tomato plant but are not seeing any flowers or fruits, it generally means you got carried away with the fertilizer or used the wrong type. Too much nitrogen in the fertilizer will cause rampant growth but no fruit. Nitrogen is the first number in a chemical fertilizer’s description, such as 10-10-10. Or maybe you used 12-6-6 or something along those lines. If too much nitrogen is the culprit, all you can do is wait until the plant has used it all up or until a few good rainfalls wash away the excess. Next year, use a fertilizer that is formulated to encourage fruiting, such as 5-10-10 or better yet, use composted manure mixed with rock phosphate and granite dust. Another possible cause is too much shade. Tomatoes need 6 hours of sunlight every day and they absolutely won’t bloom if they don’t get it. And if you want big juicy tasty tomatoes, they need 8 hours of sunlight.
These are five of the more common problems you may run into when you decide to grow big juicy tasty tomatoes. None of them is particularly difficult to handle but you do need the knowledge should the problem arise in your garden. For a more in-depth discussion of how to grow big juicy tasty tomatoes, visit our sister site Grow Big Juicy Tasty Tomatoes