Remember the lovely wee seedling I brought home and how I fussed over it? And how it turned into a great big beautiful plant?
But then… the blossom end rot came.
Now this:
And so now, I say this with all due sincerity…
UP YOURS, YOU STUPID PIECE OF CRAP PLANT. I’D COME OUT THERE AND KICK YOUR DEAD ASS IF I WASN’T ALREADY AFRAID OF FALLING OFF THE FRIGGING FIRE ESCAPE AS IT IS.
I honestly have no idea what went wrong, but I can only assume something, somehow, went horribly wrong when I added eggshells to the soil to try and stave off further blossom end rot — which totally did not work, because that reddening tomato there STILL has a rotten end. (Oh, and the bean plant? Still merrily chugging along, putting out new blossoms and yielding a handful of beans here and there, happy as can be.)
So. What the hell happened?
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You could submit this case to one of the university sites I linked to, I guess. Dunno if anyone would respond, though I’d think they’d be interested in a highly resistant super-strain of blossom end rot. Sorry this plant lost the will to live.
Same thing happened to my grandmother’s tomatoes – they all rotted away. (Well, there were two good ones, but a deer ate them.) She was growing them in one of those Topsy-Turvy things though…
If it makes you feel any better, this years crop of tomatoes has been crappy for everyone. We have a farm share and this week we received what will likely be our ONLY tomatoes of the season, and there were only two of them and they were tiny. So…I would just blame nature on this one.
XN: I don’t think it was the blossom end rot that killed the plant. I think it was some sort of fungus or bacteria that got into the soil.
Lola: OMG, I posted about the Topsy-Turvey Tomato thing ages ago and I had to TURN OFF the comments on the post because people kept finding it and posting “NUH-UH YOUR DUM AND MY TOMATOS ARE AWSUM” on it. It was demented.
Kristi: I don’t know if you’re in the Northeastern US or not, but late blight has pretty much devastated the tomato crop for farmers around here. I don’t think that’s what killed my plant, but that’s why there’s no tomatoes around this year for a lot of people.
it probably is a fungus, see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/nyregion/18tomatoes.html?_r=1
No — like I just said, I really don’t think it was late blight. There were no powdery spores or spots/lesions on the plant.
Plant death! Sadness!
Your local extension office is awesome for these sorts of questions. You have a good photo to show them too. They should be able to pinpoint or have a few suggestions as to what went wrong. Blossom-end rot doesn’t kill tomatoes as far as I know, though maybe its existence is pointing to some general lackingness in the soil. Dunno.
My condolences on your loss. :(
Oh no. I hope it’s not something I’ll experience. I already have a lot of plant deaths and near deaths in my hands.
Could it be too much water?