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Blossom End Rot Tomatoes

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

Hi folks - I am having a terrible time with blossem end rot on my
tomatoes and I can't figure out why.  I live in Orange County in
Southern California so I know my PH is fine.  I know this is related to
calcium and/or watering problems.  How do you tell if it's from calium
defficiency or dry/wet watering? 

I have the tomatoes mulched thickly with composted forest humus.  I
water with the hose becuase the cup method is ridiculous for me here
since I have clay based soil and a gallon of water for 4ft. of tomatoes
does almost nothing to wet it.  I have been watering every 5 days or so,
trying to keep them evenly moist.  How deeply are you supposed to
water?  Maybe I'm watering too deeply?  According to the book though, it
says that tomatoes like to dry out a little in between watering.  I did
that last year, watered every 7 days and I still had blossom rot
problems.  I'm tired of having to prune off damaged rotted tomatoes!  

BTW, these are 5 caged tomatoes in 9 squares of space.  I have to cage
them because growing vertically I get sunscald problems.  However, I
think they are too close together.  Would being too closely planted make
the rot problems worse?  I don't have any ripe tomatoes yet, but lots of
green ones, about half have had rotted bottoms so I prune those off.  I
figure why put the plant's energy into forming fruit that's just going
to be rotted! 

Thanks.

Kim, zone 9b, so cal


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