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Post by sandbar on Nov 21, 2008 23:25:27 GMT -5
OK, I've suffered with blossom end rot and peppers rotting prior to ripening and I'm sure I have a calcium deficiency. Besides amending the soil (haven't done a soil test, yet), does anyone have a good recommendation for a calcium foliar spray?
I've heard of some of the locals using a calcium foliar spray, which should be far less expensive than having to amend 1/2 acre of garden all at once (am hoping to do it in stages because of budgetary constraints ...).
Anybody doing a foliar application of calcium?
TIA.
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Post by grunt on Nov 22, 2008 0:39:16 GMT -5
Sandbar: You might have a bit better luck hitting the soil with some form of chelating agent. You likely have enough calcium in your soil, but weather conditions make it unavailable to the plants in sufficient quantities to advantage the fruits. I use epsom salts as a chelating agent, as it has the advantage of adding magnesium, and acidifying the soil slightly. I won't say I don't get BER anymore, but the incidence is way down from what it used to be. But let's see what everyone else has to say. I could also be all wet on this.
Cheers
Dan
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Post by michaeljohnson on Nov 22, 2008 2:37:04 GMT -5
Calcium Nitrate-if you can get it -is the quickest acting stuff, just sprinkle a small quantity around the roots and water in, but other than that watering is the most important, never let the compost dry out at all during fruit setting time-it must always be dampish, but also if you incorporate into your soil/compost plenty of Dolomite lime early in the season jan/feb time and keep the watering right you should have no further problems.
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Post by canadamike on Nov 22, 2008 2:55:46 GMT -5
Dolomitic works great but takes a couple of weeks to kick in. Diluted milk ( or strait) as a foliar feed and then added to the soil is fast.
You can also use human calcium supplement sold in drugstores.
Foliar feeding is the fastest for BER, it goes directly in when the soil is waterlogged. This is an old trick farmers used in the past. They would also always throw their bad milk in the tomato patch...
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Post by johno on Nov 22, 2008 11:50:23 GMT -5
I brought up spraying milk a couple of years ago and someone fought me to death that it was proven not to work. I still use it and it still works for me...
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Post by paquebot on Nov 23, 2008 14:26:41 GMT -5
There's never been an effective foliar spray for blossom end rot before and never will. The plants are not programmed to take in calcium through their leaves, only their roots. If anyone tries to sell you a foliar spray to correct or prevent it, may as well simply use water as either would be equally ineffective.
Martin
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Post by landarc on Nov 23, 2008 16:31:35 GMT -5
Sandbar, you will be better off getting that soils report before you start spraying anything. I also would check the pH of your soil. That is where the biggest issue is. Failing that, I would do what Grunt says, it won't hurt.
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Post by PapaVic on Nov 23, 2008 16:49:48 GMT -5
I agree with most everything said so far, however ...
BER is caused by insufficient or inefficient uptake and delivery of calcium to the developing walls of green fruit. Most soils contain sufficient calcium. A soils test would prove whether your soil does or doesn't.
Balancing the pH of your soil is the best way to ensure the calcium present in the soil becomes available via the roots. Even watering and preventing dried out or saturated soil conditions is the best way to ensure root health and root conditions that assist in sufficient uptake and delivery of calcium to the developing walls of green fruit.
Now, about some of the controversial aspects of calcium "foliar" sprays ...
Martin is correct. Tomato leaves are not biologically adept at absorbing calcium for delivery to developing fruit. However, tests have proven that calcium sprayed onto very young fruit can be absorbed directly through the skin. Timing is critical. The fruit skin must be "tacky" feeling as in young fruit that you can feel a kind of tackiness or fuzziness to the skin. This stage does not last long. Soon, the fruit skin developes a waxiness that prevents transfer of moisture into or from the fruit. When the skin becomes waxy, no amount of spray will cause transfer of calcium through the skin and into the developing green walls of the fruit.
Bottom line: Healthy soil at a pH of 6.5 - 6.8, even watering at a rate of 1.5 inches rainfall per week, sufficient mulch to retain even moisture levels in the soil.
If your soil pH is proper and you still need to add calcium to the soil, use Gypsum since the result will be neutral ... calcium sulfate ... the calcium is alkaline and the sulfur is acid.
And I hope we're talking about growing tomatoes in garden soil here, because if the problem with BER is in containers ... whole nuther discussion.
Bill
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Post by canadamike on Nov 23, 2008 19:38:32 GMT -5
This is becoming really interesting. I do not doubt you, martin and Bill. Now, we know that some measure of success can be achieve bu foliaring. But I doubt it can explain why it always worked for me or Johno. i find it a bit thin in terms of probability.
Bill, it is the n transferred to the rest of the plant or stays in the fruit?
It also brings up another topic. Would the way we do it be accounted for in this success. I mean, I do not aim at each leaf, but sprays quite liberaly and in quantity, not wanting to mss any spot. Is it possible that these quantities, albeit minimal compared to watering, could be enough? That some of it percolates the soil, or simply go straiht to the roots because we also end up spraying the base of the stem of plants? Could these quantities be sufficient to help until the general conditions ( usually waterloging) improve?
It is interesting, becaus if so, since I foliar spray a lot, I could take the wand and then go for the base of the stem an voila, one pshhhht! and I have complemented foliar by root feeding.
I can't deny the evidence given by 2 guys knowing their stuff as much as Martin and Bill, but I guess neither Johno nor I can deny it has worked for us either. Now, I am looking at it in a very different perspective . What worked was not what either tought. but something did. What? Stuff going on the soil?
Could it also be the incomplete rootlets almost always forming on the bottom part of the stems?
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Post by sandbar on Nov 23, 2008 22:49:21 GMT -5
Very interesting thread ...
Michel, you are spraying the base/stem of the plant, too?
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Post by grunt on Nov 24, 2008 3:56:54 GMT -5
I agree with all of this, and I'll add my own take based on my understanding (perhaps faulty) of the process. It isn't that there is no calcium available to the plant, or it would manifest itself directly as a calcium deficiency. The problem is due to insufficient calcium available to supply both plant growth and fruit development adequately, and the plant growth gets first dibs on the available calcium. The calcium is likely there in the soil in sufficient quantity, but not necessarily in a form that is available to the plant. High soil temperatures or soil that is too wet, will both lock up a large portion of the calcium that is there, as far as the plant is concerned. Part of the problem is that the plant is putting on new growth at a fairly high rate, and siphons off much of the available calcium to service that end. There isn't much that can be done to prevent the high soil temps or the saturated ground, which leaves two options, use of a chelating agent (epsom salts and gypsum would both qualify), and lowering (in advance) the amount of nitrogen that is available in the early half of the season. Given time for more root system to develop before the plant starts to really push the growth, should give the plant access to proportionally more calcium when it is given the nitrogen to boost the growth rate. As Bill says, Bottom line: Healthy soil at a pH of 6.5 - 6.8, even watering at a rate of 1.5 inches rainfall per week, sufficient mulch to retain even moisture levels in the soil. Have ample phosphorous and potassium in the soil, and use a slow release nitrogen source, or arrange it so that the plant doesn't get to the good stuff right off (bury the poo a little deeper, or a little farther from the plant base). Give the plant a chance to get down a good root system before pushing it to growing a larger upper level. My fall and spring soil preps are usually adding P and K , and turning in last years mulch. Sometimes horse pucky makes the list then too, but more often it is side dressed under the mulch in the spring. I still have to use MiracleGro to some extent, as the soil here was badly abused by the previous owner, but I don't make the first application until the plants have been in the ground about a month, so the plants get a chance to get some roots down before they are asked to get running full bore. It does cost me a bit in crop earliness, but only a week or two, not the full month I hold off the nitrogen push. And it does seem to cut the amount of BER I see. This year, with 530 plants, I might have had three dozen fruit lost to BER. My worst BER year, I lost more than that from two plants of one variety. That was before I started getting serious and trying to figure out what I was doing. I'm still trying to figure it out, gathering information and trying to patch it all together in my mind (which is a little difficult as the filing system has no index cards). I'll leave it at this for now. I know I haven't said what I wanted to very clearly, but if I tinker with it any more it won't make any sense to me either. Head colds make it very hard to be coherent. Cheers Dan |
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Post by paquebot on Nov 24, 2008 23:30:17 GMT -5
I'm involved in 1½ acres of community gardens. Well over 100 gardeners growing tomatoes. I've yet to see anything resembling blossom end rot and nobody does anything to prevent it. That's because the soil is up to 2' of prairie silt atop 3' of orange clay mixed with thick veins of almost pure calcium. The last thing that the tomatoes need would be more calcium.
At home, deep pure prairie silt was the basic soil and that normally needs additional lime to grow certain crops. But there's been probably 100 or so deer rib cages which never left here in the past 30+ years. Smashed, shredded, buried, composted or otherwise dissolved into the soil. If anything, there's an excess of available calcium and enough to last for years.
Does this mean that I don't ever have BER? I had it once in Riesentraube in 2001 but grown in a container. I blame inadequate watering for that case.
Martin
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Post by michaeljohnson on Nov 25, 2008 0:39:41 GMT -5
Over here in the UK- there is actually a foliar spray for BER that you can buy, formulated by an oxford university agricultural chemist for the main use of apple orchards etc,-in apples the condition is called (Bitter Pit) and they spray it onto the leaves with a power machine spray and drench behind a tractor.
I cant remember the exact formulae but it was fairly complex involving about five chemicals- one of which was a wetting agent.
Calcium Nitrate-works almost overnight and is a one off treatment, these days it is mostly used by champion chrysanthemum growers, and is very fast in action so it should be used sparingly . and was one of the ingrediants in the (Bitter Pit apple orchard spray) as was also a substance called Trace element Frit.
Also it has been found that if young tomato seedlings about six inches high have been blued at all with the cold or have had the purple stalk owing to a cold spell it causes calcium lock up in the stem with no calcium movement in the main sap flow, the only thing that will quick cure it is keep the stems translucent and green-warm, and add plenty of seaweed solution to keep the trace elements high, any young plant blued or purple stalked through the cold in the early part of the season are much more prone to getting BER later in the season if just left and not treated early. but of course there are so many variables on this theme that some people using the same compost and watering over the years that they may never get it- it is just the luck of the draw and temp fluctuations and seasonal conditions, but in the main- Ber Manifests itself far more in peat based composts than in other types of compost as this is in ninety percent of all mixes used for container growing and grow bags etc.
The main problem of BER with tomato growers, is those plants grown in containers or grow bags,-grow bags being the worst, as they can dry out in five minutes on a warm day.
Ber only seems to happen to large tomatoes and long pointy tomatoes or roma type tomatoes, so it is best not to grow these varieties in containers or grow bags unless you are very experianced, as it is so easy to neglect them for even an hour.
One of the best ways to beat it is to grow cherry types in the containers of grow bags instead rather than the garden or greenhouse, as cherry type tomatoes never ever get BER, especially if the have the wild genes of E-Pimpinifolium in their make up.
Last season I never lost one plant to BER in containers or grow bags, because during hot mornings or mid days I was out there watering them up to five times a day to stop the surface of the compost from drying out, if I could not do it personally I enlisted some help from the family- the last watering usually took place just as the sun was going down in the evening- but probably the best way is to install some sort of drip system or leaky pipe system which is usually a flat flexible tube hose with lots of little slits in it, the main water pressure pipes can be controles with little screw clamp valves that can be obtained very cheaply from an aquarium supply shop, as they use hundreds of them there on clear plastic tubing to alter the flow of air or water pipes, and are only a few cents each.
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Post by canadamike on Nov 25, 2008 0:46:34 GMT -5
Martin, are you telling us you use your lettuce and other goodies to attract and hunt deer?  Around here, there is a lady selling large tomato plants at her greenhouse. Almost everybody buys from her. And every year, everybody has ber problems. She sells them cheap, 5 $ or so, my buddy got 50 at 3$ , at 4 feet high and loaded with tomatoes. I talked to her about that problem. She only uses 20-20-20. She has NO concept of micro-nutrients or oranic matter. Right by the greenhouse, she has a dreadful garden. Nothing grows, and it does include her tomatoes. I had a look: pure sand. And on top, she is too busy to take care of it. I talked about humus, she had no idea what it was... So by the time the tomatoes end up in the ground, it is too late for lots of fruits, they are almost ready ( or are) to ripen. And people think they do something wrong or there is a disease around...  PS: Sandbar. Of course. I use a back pack sprayer. There is a lot of liquid coming out in a mist. It sure ends up on the stems and on the soil. Sometimes, with seaweed, I poke the tip in the ground near the stems or roots of veggies, but the stems always get stuff anyway. |
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Post by johno on Nov 25, 2008 3:28:27 GMT -5
I wonder about a few possibilities why Michel and I find foliar milk spray works against BER. Obviously, the possibility of the milk dripping into the soil at the roots came to mind. I suppose this might even happen during mornings with heavy dew. A possibility that seems more plausible is that we might have inadvertently corrected the soil/calcium problem around the same time as the milk spray seemed to be the solution. A third idea dawned on me, but I don't know if it makes sense. Is blossom end rot caused by an actual organism only under the condition of stress due to lack of calcium (it sure looks like one if it isn't)? If so, it might be that the proteins in milk attack it directly rather than correcting a deficiency.
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