Blossom rot looks like little brown spots on the blossom end which gets bigger as the fruit grows so probably. Dawn and Jay are the experts. They'll be along to either confirm or deny and further enlighten, I'm sure.

It sounds like BER to me and Roma seem to get BER more than any other tomato I have grown. The good news is that it will probably only effect the first few tomatoes and the rest will be OK.

Dawn posted one time (I think it was Dawn) that she planted her tomatoes as deep as she could. After they began growing, she would take off the lower stems.

Well, I did the planting, but forgot about the stems. Mine were too small to remove the stems immediately, and then I got too busy.

Well now, I have loads of tomatoes sitting on the mulch. I have gone in and tried to add as much mulch as possible, but many are on the mulch. I am afraid that I have opened the door for blossom end rot. I picked off another 6 today. Some are Early Girl, and many were on Green Zebra. Since the tomatoes are so close to the mulch, or in it, I cannot tell what ones have the end rot.

It sounds to me like you have it. Sadly.

Sammy

The times I've grown Romas I always have BER it seems on the first several. Like Carol said, after that they're usually fine. Good luck.

Dale OKC

Whew....at least they will be ok in the end. There is a TON of them on the plant, it is going to KILL me to pick them off! :) It is nice to know they will spring back...

Thanks everyone!

And you right, they are not on my cherry tomatoes...

There is another thread here on the forum in regard to BER with Dawn's response to the cause(s). If I recall correctly, the main issue has to do with watering. The recent deluge we had probably didn't help your tomatos much.

From everything I have read, Romas do tend to get BER more often than other tomatos.

I had BER, however, on 1 Jet Star and 2 Rutgers. Both were among the first tomatos produced on each plant. After those three, I haven't had any. I may get a few more after the big rain we had, but I've been checking daily and so far, so good. They seem to "straighten" themselves out after the first few tomatos are produced. Either that, or we "straighten" out our watering techniques. Of course, we can't help what Mother Nature provides in the way of torrential rains.

It is my understanding that the previous theory used to be a calcium deficiency, or inability of the plants to take up the calcium. Dawn can explain this much better than I can. Anyway, that theory is just that - an old theory, without any basis in fact.

I bet your tomatos will produce lots of tomatos without BER in the future. But there is nothing more startling than finding those nasty brown circles on the blossom end of your tomatos like someone has dipped them in, well...you know what!

Susan

As Susan said, BER is much more complex than scientists once believed. Back in the Dark Ages when I was a kid, they thought it was simply that the soil was lacking in calcium and that adding calcium to the soil would stop BER. Well, it didn't. Many years of research later, they now know that BER is related to how a plant's vascular system takes up calcium and disperses it through the plant.

BER is more common earlier in the season when the tomato plants' root system and vascular system are relatively immature and can only handle so much water at one time and can only transport so much calcium at one time. That's why plants seem to grow out of it....because the root systems and vascular systems get bigger and stronger.

Essentially, when you have a plant carrying tomatoes, both the plant and the fruit need the calcium. However, since survival of the plant is more important than the survival of any given fruit, calcium will leave the tomatoes and go back into the plant when the plant needs calcium and isn't picking up/circulating enough via its root system/vascular system. When that calcium leaves the fruit, the calcium deprived areas, which are those the greatest distance from the stem--hence, the blossom end--lose their calcium and the tissue develops BER.

BER is most common on younger plants carrying a heavy load of fruit. It is also common on plants pushed too hard to grow too much too fast via the application of high-nitrogen fertilizers. This occurs because the high nitrogen helps the plant develop more green foliage than the root system can easily support. BER also occurs during periods of uneven watering, and too much water contributes to it just as much as too little. Those of you who had heavy rainfall recently are just at the mercy of the rainfall in this case.

Usually, once the plant matures a little more and has a stronger vascular system, you won't see BER any more as long as you maintain even soil moisture and don't overfertilize.

BER is physiological in origin, so it isn't a disease and it doesn't spread, although if conditions are right for it to develop on one plant, it often will develop on other plants too.