If you know you're not going to eat the fruit, remove it. It is a strong energy sink & the plant will continue to direct lots of energy into making the imperfect fruit.

I would continue to fertilize unless you are seeing signs of fertilizer burn. If the plants are lush with foliage (your assessment in this area, please?), you may want to consider changing to a 1:1:1 or even a 2:1:2 ratio soluble fertilizer @ 1/2 strength every week to slow vegetative growth & coax the plant to produce more blooms & set additional fruit.

Al

BER is a tricky beast. You can do everything right and still have BER due to environmental issues you can't control. I agree with Al to remove the fruits now and wait for the next round. All you can do is all you can do.

Hi,

I have some advice that may work for you. I use a product called Metanaturals Calcium specifically for BER and it has worked 100%. I got BER on my very first ever potted tomatoes and haven't seen any for the last five years. It's available on the net and probably somewhere near you. I also am in agreement with Al (hi Al!) about your fertilizer regime seems high in N for a plant you want to flower a bunch. The Metanaturals line has single "ingredient" nitrogen and bloom formulas as well, which I use on my tomatoes. It's starting to sound like I work for them, but it's just great stuff. Please let us know how things go.. :)

Hannah

Thanks everyone for the advice and I looked up that Metanaturals Calcium and it sounds interesting to use for next year. Al, the plants have very lush green foliage. I decided to hold off fertilizing for a couple of weeks (the container mix should have enough slow release to get by) and picking off the rotted fruit. I see the second wave setting and they look perfect (knock on wood) so I'm not so depressed about this anymore. :-)

JaG & I were discussing a fertilizer strategy whereby the tomato plant would be fed with something like a 3:1:2 blend early & then switch to a low N formula. I fertilized heavily (1/4 strength @ every watering) until early July & then switched to very low concentrations of 3:1:2 weekly with the ProTeKt added. It really seems to have worked very well. I have very lush plants with tons of blooms & small (ie unripe) fruit this year. I'm usually very happy with my tomato plants, but this is the best they've been - and that's after a very slow start (cold) and their current reluctance to ripen (cool nights). When they DO come on, I'll have plenty of fruit.

Al

I have one self-watering container, the "square foot success kit" that I got from Gardener's Supply. I have a Sausage planted in it. It's extremely healthy, very green, very tall, and has almost two dozen tomatoes on it.

Unfortunately, it's the only tomato plant that has developed BER tomatoes. :-( All of the other container tomato plants are in plastic or terra cotta pots with drainage. They tend to droop, even just after they've been watered, and they don't have a fraction of the tomatoes that the Sausage has.

I fertilized them all today with Miracle-Gro tomato food, and I also scattered some bone meal on top. I'm hoping that will prevent BER in the future. This is the second year I've planted tomatoes, and the first year I've had this much success with them.

Aside from Sausage, I'm growing Black Plum, Opalka, Garden Candy cherry tomato, Viva Italia, Roma, Amish Paste, Sunmaster, and Orange Banana. One of each except for the Roma. I'm experimenting with what kind grows best and tastes best. (And you'll notice that most of them are paste tomatoes. I love pasta sauce, and I have a separate freezer to store it in for the winter.)

Anyone ever tried Sensi Cal Mg Grow to combat the deficiencies that cause blossom end rot? It works great for me.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sensi Cal Mg