I grow tomatoes for a living. I have seen just about every major malady that will strike a tomato at one time or another. Russet Mites, had em. Spider Mites, had em. But those things just affect the plant itself and not so much the fruit, with a mite infestation, you will get a reduced crop of tomatoes but with the dreaded Blossom End Rot, It ruins the actual tomato. 

Blossom End Rot, What is it?

 Blossom End Rot(BER) is not a condition caused by bugs or bacteria, it is a calcium deficiency that causes the Blossom End of the tomato to Rot, just like the name says.  There are several factors that may cause the calcium deficiency erratic watering, lack of calcium in the soil even Ph of the soil can effect uptake of many nutrients including calcium. BER can also affect Peppers, Melons an Cucumbers, although in my experience, tomatoes are the most sensitive to it.

 The good news! It is relatively easy to correct, the bad news is all the tomatoes affected by it are ruined. 

 Now in my case, I use a fertilizer mix that was especially formulated for my water source, calcium is one of the main ingredients, our water is Ph adjusted automatically and we don't use soil. So how can I get Blossom End Rot you ask?

 Well I'll tell you how, I use a two stage fertilization schedule. I start the plants off with a formula that uses less nutrients for the growth stage of the tomato. When the tomato starts to set the first fruit, we use a boosted formula to assist the plants when the fruiting starts requiring more nutrients. So how did I get it? I was about a week late on the boost. 

 You have to be on your toes when you are responsible for providing everything the plant needs. 

What Does BER Look Like?

 First off, let's define the blossom end of the tomato, It is the end opposite the stem. Easy enough, or we could just call it the bottom end also, the side that sits on the counter.  

 So most of the time you won't even notice the start of BER until it has taken over most of the tomato since the blossom end is usually facing the ground. But once it gets a hold of most of the tomato you can't miss it.

 So here we have a healthy tomato, this is a blossom end that didn't form smoothly which is very common in heirloom varieties. As you can see the bottom is uniformly green with no dark spots.

Here is a tomato with a similarly formed blossom end, but now we have a dark spot, the first stage of BER.

 Here you see the dark spot spread further out, soon it will cover most of the bottom half of the tomato.

Like so.

How to Fix BER

As I said earlier, calcium is the key! The best way to solve this problem is prevention. If you are a home gardener, test your soil. Check with your local Ag extension office and see about having a soil sample sent off, this will tell you exactly what you have and don't have in the soil. You can amend you soil with bone meal, as well as calcium sprays specifically for BER. Also consistent watering, not to much and not to long in between watering. 

 The good news is that if you can adjust the calcium uptake to the plant, the rest of the tomatoes will be just fine, in my case I should correct itself with all the tomatoes after this first bunch.

 So if your struck with a case of Blossom End Rot, it's not the end of the world, you'll just lose a few tomatoes until you get it fixed up. 

Bonus Picture

 This isn't BER, it's just a tomato that had some kind of malfunction. There are strange leafy type growths coming from the bottom of this malformed tomato, not sure what's up with it but I found it interesting.

Creepy Huh?

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