Quote Originally Posted by urbanfarmer
Blossom-end rot is a nutritional disorder. Too little available calcium, too much or too little water and severe pruning favor its development. This can be corrected to some degree by spraying the plant with a solution of 4 tablespoons of calcium chloride mixed in 3 gallons of water. Spray twice weekly, 1 quart per plant, according to product labels.

Blossom drop can be caused by too low or too high night temperatures, too much nitrogen, too much shade, over-watering or even insects, such as flower thrips.

Other tomato disorders include fruit cracking, blotchy ripening, sunscald, yellow-shoulder, leaf-curl, and herbicide injury. The whitefly and a virus have teamed up to cause plant stunting and irregular ripening.

UF/IFAS (HS508)
Why do they need calcium? Once, on one of the tomato plants, that there were a few leaves that had purple-ish color with some spots also. Is that a tomato disease/disorder?

I also see this yellow-orange-green powder like substance on my fingers when I touch my tomato plants. When I wash my hands after, it feels sticky but smooth and easily rid from my fingers. Is that normal?


Quote Originally Posted by cedarswamp
"are you using an electric toothbrush, or q-tips or anything to shake the plants? or do you have bugs doing the work?"

What Keith is asking is have you taken care of pollination? If you don't have insects doing it for you, you gotta do it yourself.
I see little bugs and when I pinch off the "suckers" growing in between branches, I shake the plants a little bit. I'll try to make it "pollinate" more. We have a mild wind sometimes inside the greenhouse.


Quote Originally Posted by keith_r
egg shells will take a long time to break down, which won't hurt anything...crushing them and burying a dozen with each tomato plant in dirt gardens is common (at least around here)
re the fertilizer.. some contain phosphates... bad for fish..
others may not conain anything that is bad for the fish, but excess nutrients can cause an algae bloom which can starve your fish of oxygen.. or an cause an amonia spike..
I dont get the whole egg shell concept. What do I actually do? Put it in our grow beds on the tomato plant roots?