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Treating tomato blight


Tomato blight: treatments the gardening experts swear by

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Every year gardeners will desperately seek out a tomato blight treatment to help salvage their homegrown crop of tomatoes. 

Even if you're an expert at growing tomatoes, chances are you'll have encountered this devastating disease at some point.

Tomato blight – or Phytophthora infestans – otherwise known as late blight, is among the worst problems affecting tomatoes. It is the same fungus that can turn potatoes to mush and similarly affects tomatoes, which are cousins of the tubers. 

One moment your plants can be looking lush and healthy, the sweet smell of the ripening fruits filling the air – but then within only a few days the plants can be ravaged by blight which can sweep through them like wildfire.  

So arm yourself with the knowledge of how to avoid the disease, or know the best tomato blight treatments if it does affect your plants.

(Image credit: TI Media)

Tomato blight – treatments for outdoor and indoor crops

Because tomato blight is spread by airborne spores carried on the wind, and it likes warm, wet conditions, outdoor grown tomatoes are more susceptible to it that those grown in the greenhouse or polytunnel. 

Tomatoes are therefore a perfect choice for greenhouse ideas, or for growing in other environments under cover.

That's not to say that greenhouse crops are completely in the clear. Given the right conditions, late tomato blight can just as easily ravage an indoor tomato crop, but it is easier to control the environmental conditions under cover, such as keeping rain off the plants.

The same tomato blight treatments apply whether you grow your tomatoes indoors or outdoors.

(Image credit: Getty Images/ Daniela White)

What does tomato blight look like?

Tomato blight is a fungal infection that appears on different parts of the tomato plant.  

'In the early stages of late tomato blight, the bottom leaves get affected first with black rings of powdery blight. This makes the leaves turn pale green to a musty yellow in color and appearance,' explains Tammy Sons of Tennessee Wholesale Nursery .

'The leaves eventually get so infected they drop. As the blight progresses up the stalk of the tomato vine, the tomatoes get brown spots on them as the entire plant becomes infested. End-stage blight makes the entire tomatoes rot from the blight infection,' Tammy adds.

(Image credit: Annaick Guitteny)

The signs of tomato blight in the order they are likely to appear are:

Tomato blight can kill a plant within a week, so it's important to keep looking out for any telltale signs, and act quickly as soon as you spot them.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

How do you stop tomato blight?

The simple answer is that you can't stop tomato blight altogether – but you can take steps to prevent the chances of infection occurring.

'There are no chemical controls for tomato blight available to the home gardener,' says Simon Crawford, breeder at Burpee Europe . 

But rather than turning to tomato blight treatment once your crop has been affected, 'two other key methods should be used to control the disease: environmental management and the use of resistant varieties,' Simon continues.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Environmental controls for tomato blight

The following environmental controls can help to prevent the occurrence or spread of tomato blight:

(Image credit: Getty Images)

How to stop the spread of tomato blight

If the worst happens and you do find signs of blight on some of your plants, then  the best tomato blight treatment is to remove these infected plants immediately to try to prevent the spread to other plants.

Check tomato plants regularly during the growing season, especially when the conditions are warm and wet.

'If you can, burn blighted plants and tomatoes,' explains gardening expert Monty Don in a video for Gardeners' World . 'Or compost the foliage and fruit, if you have a good composting system, as composting kills off the spores,' he continues.

It's important that you do no plant your tomatoes next to potatoes, which can also be victims of late blight, but carefully choose your tomato companion planting.

(Image credit: Burpee Europe)

Can you eat tomatoes with blight?

If you have an infected tomato plant, while you would not want to eat any tomatoes that are obviously affected by blight, any ripe tomatoes that don't show signs of blight are still perfectly good to eat.

However, 'if you leave tomatoes on a blighted plant, they won't ripen,' says Monty Don. He advises harvesting any green tomatoes that have no signs of blight and turning these into green tomato chutney.

(Image credit: Future / Annaick Guitteny)

Grow blight resistant tomato varieties

'Many modern tomato varieties have made growing outdoor tomatoes easier because of earlier ripening and improved disease resistance,' says Simon Crawford.

There are a number of varieties that have been bred with blight resistance. Simon Crawford lists the following varieties:

Tomato ‘Merrygold’. 'This is the world’s first blight resistant orange fruited variety. This plant is high yielding, producing a mass of brightly, rich orange tomatoes.' 

Tomato ‘Cocktail Crush’. 'With super blight resistance, this variety is ideal for growing outdoors.' 

Tomato ‘Crimson Blush’. 'This blight resistant beefsteak tomato is sweeter than other beefsteak varieties.'

Tammy Sons recommends some further blight resistant tomato varieties: 'Tommy Toes are heirloom red tiny tomatoes, robust in flavor and very juicy; Legend variety is a red beefsteak and a favorite of most commercial growers; Juliet is a small hybrid red tomato; and Manyel is a yellow tomato also low in acid. '

There are more varieties that you can try, so do your research before planting.

(Image credit: Burpee Europe)

Tomato blight treatment – baking soda

Some gardeners swear by a tomato blight treatment using baking soda.

The US Department of Agriculture advises creating the following solution to help prevent the disease or provide a tomato blight treatment.

To one gallon of water add:

Spray the tomato plants with this solution, and reapply it regularly to maintain its efficiency, USDA advises.

So while there is no way to completely stop the chance of your tomatoes ever developing tomato blight, there are many ways you can reduce the chance of infection, or prevent its spread to your entire crop. 

These are among the many vegetable garden ideas to consider when planning your plot.

Rachel is senior content editor, and writes and commissions gardening content for homesandgardens. com, Homes & Gardens magazine, and its sister titles Period Living Magazine and Country Homes & Interiors. She has written for lifestyle magazines for many years, with a particular focus on gardening, historic houses and arts and crafts, but started out her journalism career in BBC radio, where she enjoyed reporting on and writing programme scripts for all manner of stories. Rachel then moved into regional lifestyle magazines, where the topics she wrote about, and people she interviewed, were as varied and eclectic as they were on radio. Always harboring a passion for homes and gardens, she jumped at the opportunity to work on The English Home and The English Garden magazines for a number of years, before joining the Period Living team, then the wider Homes & Gardens team, specializing in gardens.

Tomato Blight Treatment and Prevention Tips

While tomatoes tend to thrive in home gardens, they can sometimes be plagued by disease.

Three different types of blight may strike – early, late, and Septoria blight.

What’s a poor gardener to do?

By keeping a close eye on your plants, and starting treatment as soon as possible if you detect one of these insidious diseases, there may be hope for your crop!

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This guide will show you how to distinguish between these diseases, prevent them, and treat the infection.

Here’s what’s ahead in this article:

What You’ll Learn

A Rundown of the Culprits

There are three types of blight that affect tomato plants. Spots on the leaves are the first indication of each of these infections. However, they all have their quirks that allow you to distinguish between them.

Symptoms of early blight.

Two are caused by fungi – early blight (Alternaria solani) and Septoria blight, aka Septoria leaf spot (Septoria lycopersici).

The third – late blight (Phytophthora infestans) – was considered a fungus for 200 years. However, it is now known as a water mold (or oomycete, to be technical).

This organism is what caused the Irish potato famine, forever altering Irish and American history.

Late blight.

Alternaria and Septoria can devastate your crop at home, while late blight is an extremely serious infection that can decimate whole tomato fields.

Late blight is such a menace that you are advised to inform your county extension agent if you find it in your garden.

Read more about identifying late blight here.

Early blight and Septoria are often confused, since each of these infections causes the leaves to yellow and die. And both of these infections start on the lower leaves.

However, it is possible to tell them apart. Here’s how:

  1. Alternaria produces lesions with concentric rings that can also affect the fruit. They appear on the lower leaves first.
  2. Septoria leaf lesions, on the other hand, usually present as numerous tiny brown spots that grow and spread.
  3. Advanced Septoria leaf lesions contain dark colored fruiting bodies that look like grains of pepper. Alternaria does not produce any comparable structures.
  4. The lesions of late blight look different from those caused by fungi. They start out as little spots that look like they are soaked with water before spreading into large purple-brown blotches that appear oily.
  5. This water mold can also infect the fruit in cases of late blight, typically starting on the shoulders.

Check out our in-depth guides to learn more about early blight, and Septoria leaf spot.

Prevention

Prevention is your best bet in the battle against all of these diseases, and in some cases you can nip them in the bud (or leaves, or fruit…).

While these diseases are all caused by different types of microbes, there are common steps that you may employ to prevent infection.

Plan Your Garden

Before you start planting, plan the layout of your garden with the help of your gardening journal.

Locate your tomato plants away from areas where you want to grow potatoes or other nightshades.

Check your seed packets to establish mature sizes of the varieties you are growing. This allows you to ensure adequate spacing between plants, to prevent the spread of disease.

Grow Resistant Varieties

When choosing your plants, particularly if you know blight has been a problem in the past, choosing to grow resistant varieties is recommended. Information about resistance to different types of disease is typically included in tomato cultivar descriptions.

Resistance to early blight is usually labeled “EB” on tomato seed packets.

Keep in mind that resistance is not the same thing as immunity. Tomato plants that are resistant to early blight can sometimes contract the disease anyway.

Resistance to late blight is more difficult for plant breeders to select for, since the water molds mutate quickly and have been able to overcome resistance in the past.

‘Magic Mountain’

However, the cherry tomato cultivar ‘Magic Mountain,’ available from Burpee, is resistant to both early and late blight.

‘Iron Lady’ and ‘Defiant’ are two cultivars that are resistant to early, late, and Septoria blight.

Though it is not quite at the level of being resistant, the ‘Sweetheart of the Patio’ cultivar is tolerant of late blight, and it’s well-suited to growing in containers.

You can read more about this variety and find out where to purchase seeds in our roundup of the best cherry tomatoes to plant in your garden.

Stake Your Plants

Promoting good airflow will also help to reduce the levels of moisture in the interior of the plant. Staking your plants prevents fruit and foliage from coming in contact with the ground.

Check out our guide to learn more about using the Florida weave to support tomato plants.

Fertilize

Ideally you should test your soil before you plant, to make sure the pH is between 6.5 and 7.5, and to determine whether there are any nutrient deficiencies.

At this time, before your seeds or transplants are in the ground, you should amend your soil accordingly.

After that, don’t fertilize your tomato plants again when they are young. Wait until they are well established and blooming before you fertilize again.

Fertilizers with an NPK ratio of 5-20-5 or 4-12-4, with the highest level of phosphorus in comparison to the amounts of nitrogen and potassium, are good choices.

If you need to add nitrogen, on the basis of your soil test results, also apply calcium nitrate at the same time. This will help to avoid blossom-end rot.

Do not add urea or ammonia as nitrogen fertilizers, as tomato plants are very sensitive to ammonium toxicity. This can result in yellowing of the leaves and poor root development.

Remove Weeds

Members of the nightshade family serve as hosts for all of these diseases. Such beloved crops as tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant are all members of this family.

It also includes common weeds like nightshade and jimsonweed, as well as ground cherry.

All of these types of plants can harbor the pathogens, so be vigilant, and purge them from your garden! This includes volunteer tomato plants as well.

Irrigate at Ground Level

Watering your plants from above can invite infection. This is particularly true in the case of sprinkler irrigation, but even using a watering can can be an unhealthy practice if water is showered onto the foliage.

Instead, use a soaker hose to provide drip irrigation at the ground level. If your plants are growing in containers, make sure you water at the soil line.

Avoid Wet Conditions

Since all of these diseases are spread by water, resist the urge to work with your tomato plants in any way if they are moist. This includes moisture from rain, dew, and irrigation.

On wet days, it’s best to skip checking your plants for pests or picking any pests from the leaves. Do not prune when plants are wet, and wait to stake or train plants that require additional support or adjustment until they are dry.

You should even avoid going out to harvest tomatoes in this type of weather. If an extended period of rain is in the forecast, consider picking the fruit in advance of inclement weather, or wait until plants have dried again.

Apply Mulch

This may not seem like an obvious step, but an application of mulch can also help to prevent contaminated soil from touching the leaves.

Another benefit is that it can reduce the amount of humidity around your tomato plants. Lower humidity means any spores present are less likely to germinate and cause an infection.

However, you should wait until the soil has warmed up to apply mulch. Add three to four inches of organic mulch around the base of plants about three to five weeks after planting.

Grass clippings, wood chips, or straw that is free from weed seeds are all good choices.

Remove Infected Plants

Be vigilant about removing infected plants. In the case of late blight, all plants, including those that are not showing symptoms, should be removed and destroyed.

If you had a blight infection at some point during the growing season, bag up all the tomato plants and remove them from your property.

Do not add any of the plant material to your compost pile, and be sure to remove all parts, including the roots and any fallen debris.

Growers with fields should disc them deep underground, so that they will decay.

Rotate Your Crops

It’s human nature to want to keep growing plants in the same place where they have done well in the past.

However, this practice can favor infection.

Even if you didn’t observe any infections the previous season, the pathogens could be lurking at low levels, waiting to strike at an opportune moment. Rotating your crops will prevent this from happening.

You should rotate your nightshade crops every year, just to be safe. If you had a problem with Septoria blight last season, make that every two to three years.

And if you absolutely cannot rotate your tomato plants since you are short on space in the in-ground beds, consider growing them in containers instead.

If you are reusing the containers, sterilize them with 10 percent bleach first, and always use fresh soil.

In the case of late blight, Jean Ristaino et al, in an article published by the American Phytopathological Society, recommend planting non-host crops in a two to three-year rotation.

Treatment

It is possible to control Septoria if you catch the infection early enough. Aggressively remove the infected leaves and purge them from your property.

Do not add the material to your compost pile, and dispose of it in the trash, away from your garden.

Simply removing infected plant matter will not control early or late blight. You will need to use fungicides to manage these infections.

Fortunately, you have several options.

You can use the same kind of fungicide to treat each of these diseases. Apply them every seven to 10 days throughout the season.

If your weather is conducive to the spread of these diseases (i.e. humid and/or rainy), you can also consider using preventative sprays before the onset of an infection.

While the products described here have all been shown to be effective, fungi can develop resistance to fungicides if they are used frequently.

Check your plants periodically to ensure that the treatment is still working. If it isn’t, you may need to change which type of fungicide you are using.

Fortunately, all of the fungicides recommended here are in different classes, so you should be safe switching between them.

Organic Fungicide

If you are looking for an organic fungicide to use, you are in luck!

Bonide Liquid Copper Fungicide

Copper will kill all of these organisms. You can buy Bonide Liquid Copper Fungicide from Arbico Organics.

Synthetic Fungicide

Many of the fungicides commonly used to treat tomato diseases will treat all of these blights.

One thing to remember with the fungicides listed here is that you should stop using them five days before you plan to harvest your tomatoes.

Your choices include:

1. Chlorothalonil – Bonide Fung-onil Concentrate, available from Amazon

2. Maneb

Biofungicide

One of the microbes commonly used in the biological control of plant diseases is effective against early blight.

It is a strain of the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, which is also known as CEASE Biological Fungicide, available at Arbico Organics.

Learn more about using B. subtilis in your garden with this guide.

Inspect Your Plants Frequently

As with any infection, your best odds of success for treating these tomato diseases is largely dependent on whether you are able to catch them early enough.

Make a point to inspect your tomato plants on a regular basis, so that you can identify an infection in its early stages. The official term for this is “scouting.”

While you might be able to stop Septoria blight from spreading if you catch it early enough, that is not the case for early or late blight.

But you can eradicate the plants from your garden to prevent further spread, and take steps to protect any tomatoes that you wish to grow next year.

Starting an aggressive campaign with fungicides as soon as you detect an infection – or even preventively, if the conditions are conducive to the spread of blight – may help to save your tomato crop.

Have you had to fend off one of these diseases? If so, let us know how you fared in the comments below.

And read on to learn about other disorders that can strike tomatoes:

© Ask the Experts, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. See our TOS for more details. Product photos via Arbico Organics and Burpee. Uncredited photos: Shutterstock. With additional writing and editing by Allison Sidhu and Clare Groom.

Blossom Rot of Tomatoes

The very first tomatoes are growing, pouring, you are rubbing your hands impatiently in anticipation of an early harvest. And suddenly ... The tips of the fruits begin to darken, dry, the heart stops and tells: this is the top rot of tomatoes in the greenhouse. All affected fruits will now "please" only the compost heap! Tomatoes affected by rot are not recommended to be eaten, and you yourself will not become tasteless. And they will delay the setting and ripening of new fruits, if not cut off. Only in one case, the affected tomatoes can be left on the bush: if the entire brush is completely affected. Because if you remove it, the balance will be upset and all the nutrients will go to the still healthy tomatoes, which will quickly begin to ripen and, of course, also get sick. You need to take a little time to eliminate the cause of the vertex rot.

So why does blossom end rot appear on tomatoes? Mainly due to lack of calcium during the period of active growth and fruit filling. Other causes are just a "trigger" that starts the process of the disease. Changes in soil and air moisture, too heavy or too light, sandy soil, excess nitrogen, salinity. All this prevents the entry of calcium into the plant.

Small, flat, light gray or brown spots first appear on the tops of the fruits. Later, they increase in size, and the pulp of the fruit rots.

Tomatoes with blossom end rot are treated with… fertilizers. It is urgent to deliver calcium to the fruits. Dilute calcium chloride (4 g / 10 l) in water and spray the plants twice a week with it. Or prepare a solution of calcium nitrate (10g / 10l) and wet the leaves too. At the same time, carry out the usual top dressing with specialized fertilizer for tomatoes. For example, Mineral fertilizer 5M-granule for tomatoes and peppers "Baby" Fasco. Dig grooves or holes around the perimeter of the bush, apply granules, bury and water. The fertilizer is famous for the same content of all five nutrients in EVERY granule, and this is achieved thanks to a unique patented technology. If in the case of a conventional mineral fertilizer you do not know for sure which granules were poured more - nitrogen-containing or those with phosphorus, then each 5M-granule fertilizer granule contains the declared amount of elements. 7% nitrogen and phosphorus, 8% potassium, 0. 44% magnesium and 7.8% calcium (pay attention to the high content of this trace element, it is now most welcome).

We recommend that you continue to apply 5M-granular Fertilizer “Malyshok” to the soil under tomatoes and peppers in order to prevent blossom end rot and harmonious development of plants.

How to deal with blossom end rot of tomatoes, we have told, but we must warn that this physiological disease can be complicated by fungal and bacterial infection. For prevention, we recommend treating plants by leaves and fruits with Alirin-B Inta-Vir biofungicide. Dilute 1 tablet in 1 liter of water, add the adhesive Inta-Vir Green Soap and spray the tomatoes. Alirin-B is absolutely safe for people, animals and the environment, but it effectively suppresses fungal infections on plants. So in the remaining summer months, you can not be afraid of new tomato diseases.

Blossom end rot of tomatoes - prevention and control methods. Photo — Botanichka

Tomato is one of the most common vegetable crops on our plots. The crop is grown not only in open ground, it also works well in protected ground, so you can get an earlier harvest of tomatoes. And although plant care is not difficult, and yields are often high, gardeners often face such a problem as tomato blossom end rot. This disease can cause significant damage to crops. So let's talk about top rot today and talk.

Top rot of tomatoes - prevention and control methods. © Sao Mai Center

Contents:

Causes of blossom end rot of tomatoes

The disease is very active both in greenhouses and in the open field, causing serious damage to the crop.

The disease can affect the tomato due to incorrect agricultural practices. Most often, blossom end rot on tomatoes appears due to increased temperature outside the window or due to too hot air in the greenhouse. As a result of elevated temperature, tomato plants begin to evaporate moisture from the surface of the leaves, as well as plant trunks, as intensively as possible. If the gardener does not understand in a timely manner that the temperature is critical and the plants suffer from it, and does not begin to moisten the soil, supplying water through the root system to the plants, then they will begin to absorb moisture from the fruits that begin to actively form by that time.

Such, in fact, unnatural processes will lead to the fact that the vast majority of tomato fruit cells will simply die and blossom-end rot of this plant will begin to actively develop. To cure it is quite problematic, but to prevent the occurrence of this disease is much easier.

But these are not all the reasons for the development of tomato blossom end rot. This disease can develop very quickly and actively proceed due to an excess or lack of calcium in the earth, a large amount of nitrogen in the soil, and also if the soil has high acidity.

Blossom end rot develops due to a lack of calcium in the soil, a large amount of nitrogen in the soil and its high acidity. © Stillwater News Press

How do you know if a tomato is infested?

To start treating tomatoes, you need to know the very first and often the most important signs of the development of blossom end rot. The unripe fruits of the third or second brush are most often subject to blossom end rot. Usually you can notice something wrong by paying attention to the very tops of the fruits, where you can even see with the naked eye completely flat or slightly depressed spots.

Initially, when the spots are not yet very large, they are painted in a darkish-greenish color, and with a strong development of the disease, and accordingly, with the growth of the spots, their color becomes grayish-brown, and as soon as the spores ripen, ready to scatter over long distances, their color becomes black.

As soon as the fruits are affected by blossom end rot, their growth is immediately inhibited and their deformation begins. It will take only a couple of days, and the skin of the fetus will begin to dry out, and then crack. It was then that a putrefactive infection penetrates into these cracks and begins to actively develop there. Mushrooms of the Alternaria genus usually settle in cracks, their vital activity leads to the fact that the pulp of tomatoes becomes literally black and begins to rot sharply.

Interestingly, those fruits of tomatoes that are affected by blossom end rot, usually color (ripe) in a color typical for the variety, usually much faster than their healthy counterparts, but immediately after ripening they crumble to the ground. Such fruits cannot be eaten fresh, they cannot be used for processed products, even if you cut off the affected area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe fruit, and of course, you should not choose seeds from them for further sowing next year.

How to treat blossom end rot of tomatoes?

If preventive measures have not helped and the tomatoes are infected with blossom end rot, the very first thing to do is to pick and burn all affected tomatoes. Infected leaves and shoots should also go into the firebox.

As for the treatment of blossom end rot of tomatoes in the greenhouse and in the open field, there are no fundamental differences. In most cases, as soon as the earth, and then the plant, is saturated with enough calcium, blossom end rot sharply slows down in its development, and then stops completely.

It is possible to saturate tomato plants with calcium very quickly by applying foliar dressings, for which it is best to use calcium sulfate. This fertilizer does not contain harmful chlorine, it is highly soluble in water. Therefore, it is enough to pour a teaspoon of this fertilizer into a bucket of water, mix everything thoroughly, refill the spray gun and the plants can be processed, trying, of course, to get first of all on the affected fruits, but do not forget about the rest of the plant.

By the way, such treatments should be carried out in the evening, and if it rains during the day, the treatments must be repeated the next evening.

If you want to maximize the absorption of calcium into plants, then you can add a little ordinary boric acid to the solution, for example, only 9 grams of boric acid is needed per ten liters of solution.

To completely get rid of blossom end rot on tomatoes, a single treatment is definitely not enough, they will need to be carried out every week, combining foliar top dressing with abundant watering of the earth, watering under the root.

There are also quite effective folk remedies to combat blossom end rot, for example, treating tomato plants with an extract of wood ash or soot. To do this, pour a full faceted glass of wood ash or soot into a larger container and pour a liter of boiling water, then let it brew for 24 hours, then strain and dilute ten times with water. It is desirable to add 15 g of soda to the solution and treat the plants with this composition every week.

All affected fruit must be destroyed. © thegardentroubadour

Prevention of blossom end rot

Preventive measures apply to any disease, and tomato blossom end rot is no exception. Prevention is much better than medication. The complex of preventive measures is quite extensive, and it begins with the preparation of seed material for sowing in the ground, and ends with the harvesting of tomatoes.

But before starting to treat the seeds in the appropriate ways, we advise you to purchase new varieties that are resistant to diseases and pests, including drought and excess moisture. By purchasing a variety whose fruit ripens early and is large in size, with maximum growth energy, you risk the most, because such a plant requires more nutrients, and the surface of the fruit itself is larger and the likelihood that even a small crack will form on it - significantly higher.

Now about the disinfection of seed material: usually tomato seeds are treated in a solution of "potassium permanganate" or iron sulfate.

Potassium permanganate is better to cook stronger - it is advisable to make a 2.5-3% solution of this "preparation", then place the seeds there in a gauze bag and keep them in the solution for thirty minutes. After this time, the tomato seeds should be washed in running water for a couple of minutes and dried.

If your choice fell on the composition of ferrous sulfate, then you need to dilute it in the following proportion: first, dilute a gram of the drug in a liter of water, then place the seeds in this composition in a gauze bag for a day, and then, without washing the seed material with water, bring it to a loose state (drying).

Prevention related to soil preparation

To protect against possible attacks of rot, which will lead to the formation of blossom end rot of tomato fruits, it is necessary to lime the earth well with chalk or dolomite flour, or even slaked lime - the latter, as you know, perfectly reduces acidity soil. Per square meter you need 50 g of chalk, 300 g of dolomite flour or 200 grams of lime.

Then, already when planting tomato seedlings in the ground, half a glass of wood ash or wood soot should be placed in each hole.

One of the methods to prevent blossom end rot is proper watering.

Learn more