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iluvcello

Why are my tomato plant stems deep purple?

9 years ago

I planted my tomato plants outside (its been nice and warm). It has been about a week and I've noticed that the stems are a deep purple and some of the leaves have dry spots on them. Should I be concerned? I've been watering them and have added epsom salts and bone meal.

Comments (10)

  • 9 years ago

    Pictures?

  • 9 years ago
    here is a picture.
  • 9 years ago
    Will get better ones later
  • 9 years ago

    When is the last time the plants were fed with real fertilizer? Also, they look very leggy. I assume they were grown indoors? If so, how did you harden them off before planting out?

  • 9 years ago

    I tend to get that early in the spring, think it's due to cool nights or humidity. It usually goes away after a week or so.

  • 9 years ago
    here are some pics of the leaves and stem. they've been in garden for about a week now.
  • 9 years ago

    Normal transplant/climate shock, probably from a cold night. Plants are looking pretty yellow though, should fertilize em.

  • 9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I hardened off my tomato plants in a covered porch. I fed my tomato plants with worm castings, bone meal and epsom salts. What ratio of N P K would you recommend?

  • 9 years ago

    joy: I hardened off my tomato plants in a covered porch.

    If they stayed in a covered porch the whole time, they weren't really hardened off. Hardening off requires a gradual exposure to full sunlight, wind, etc., starting with a day in full shade outdoors (covered porch works well for this) but then progressing to exposure to direct sun, from an hour or so of morning light increasing over the course of about a week to spending all day out in the sun.

    At any rate, the marks on your leaves are classic for sunscald. Since the damage is not too extensive, they should recover OK.

    joy: I fed my tomato plants with worm castings, bone meal and epsom salts.

    None of these things are fertilizers, really. Bone meal is, sort of, if your soil lacks P, but if it doesn't, excessive P can cause problems. Epsom salts are a source of Mg, but, once again, if you don't have a deficiency in your soil, it can do more harm than good. It's easy to create an imbalance by using these nutrient-specific products without getting proper soil testing done and if you don't have a lot of experience with soil and plant nutrition.

    N, P, and K to a plant are like protein, fat, and carbohydrates for us--the basic building blocks of our nutritional requirements. What you're doing now is like feeding a kid only fat and vitamins and not providing any protein or carbohydrates. Obviously, that's not a recipe for thriving.

    Worm castings are terrific and contribute to good tilth, add good microorganisms, etc., so keep using it, but it's not really food.

    It's a common myth that using fertilizer is somehow "bad" and true organic gardening relies only on compost. That's probably why we see so many people who use compost and various home remedies then show up on here wondering why their plants look so poorly. To not use fertilizer at all, you have to put time and effort into a long-term and constant soil-building program that has been going on for many years. In the quantities that most people use compost, i.e., a few handfuls in the planting hole and then top- or side-dressed a few times over a season, certain greens and herbs may be happy, but it's not going to cut it for fruiting plants.

    Right now, your plants need N, so I would feed them a general plant fertilizer that will be relatively higher in N. Once they start flowering and fruiting, switch to a tomato-specific fertilizer, which will be lower in N than in P or K. I hope you didn't add large amounts of bone meal, as that would mean you'd have to customize your fertilizer application more instead of being able to rely on commonly available pre-mixed products.

    joy thanked gorbelly
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