oh ok sorry to hear

I've had a little bit of the same problem with my Roma cousin San Marzano tomatoes which are planted in potting soil in my greenhouse. The probable shared cause is that sauce tomatoes require lots of Calcium ... which potting soil does NOT have in abundance ... and a calcium deficiency translates into blossom end rot.

As a short term measure I have applied Rot-Stop spray, which is a calcium bearing pump spray, to the leaves every couple of days. I grabbed it from Ace Hardware, but it's widely available.

As a longer term measure I added a dusting of some granular gypsum fertilizer on top of the potting soil. Next year I'll be sure to add / mix the granular gypsum to the potting soil at planting time.

It/s not just romas that are super susceptible to BER, it's most paste varieties, and they also are very susceptible to Early Blight ( A. solani) as well. Not all tomato varieties have the same physiology when it comes to nutrient and water uptake and it turns out that paste tomatoes are different in that regard/

There are many threads here about BER and Ca++ in the soil is NOT what's limiting in most cases, it's maldistribution within the plant induced by many different stresses.

Just do a search and all sorts of threads will pop up.

Green, Stop Rot, last I knew, was not to be sprayed on the leaves, rather, on the fruits themselves, you can check the label for me if you would please, and anything sprayed on the fruits with a product like that has shown to be only marginally effective if sprayed ONLY on the small immature fruits, which still can take up some of the Ca++. Sprayig on larger fruits is useless since at that stage their cell walls are not permable to anything and if they were every time it rained, the fruits would blow up since the tomato epidemis is stressed.

The key to control of BER is reducing the stresses that induce BER, and they are many. I'd go through them again, but I know that there are many threads here that do the same and I've posted in quite a few of them.

Hope that helps.

Carolyn, who notes that the search feature is at the bottom of this page.

I'm growing in soil, not containers, but my heirloom Pompeii romas have ber pretty badly. Curiously, my mom's plants have no ber at all. Her garden is 1/4 mile from mine, and she got her plants from me. The only thing different with her garden is that it got a lot of horse manure over the winter. I have a heavy clay soil, and I think something about the manure in her garden must make the difference in regulating moisture uptake in a clay soil.

but is your mom watering,fertilizing,sun, holding her crossed fingers just right?
i grow in swc's and i was waiting to post more on this but here goes.

i've been doing some experiments with self watering containers and i've had some ber. but it was minor, maybe 5 percent at the most. i know its a juggling act to have everything perfect. but i tried oyster shell in the planting hole. made by ORMI. the coarseness of it is like a slow release calcium. i have a roma and not one sign of ber.. just a thought. i'll post some picks this weekend.

i know it sounds crazy but?

I get BER on San Marzano early
in the season but they are pretty free from it later and do very well

I am actually getting BER on San Marzano Redorta during our 14 day heatwave/drought. The fruits set and grew large before the onset of the heatwave were totally fine, not a single BER. But once the temp got up and the rain stopped falling I had to pick off maybe 15 fruits between 4 plants. It is still not as bad as when I grew Roma years ago and I think I lost half of my fruits to BER.

So I understand that BER is caused when a fruit is actively growing but the tip doesn't get enough calcium. Will this be made worse when the tomato plant in question is already loaded with full size fruits? Once a fruit reaches full size does it still consume calcium at the same rate as a growing fruit?

I have never experienced BER including Romas. I have sandy well drained soil, and use fast draining 5:1:1 soil from the container forum. If you are using peat based soil, please check it out. Currently I have over a dozen Roma plants, and live only about an hour from you. Not one is showing BER.

From all I can find out, people who experience BER are almost always in clay soil or using peat based container medium. It appears that being too wet is worse then being too dry as I often end up with too dry plants during droughts like we have now and a limited well. But BER has never been an issue. It is usually considered caused be *inconsistent* water, but I think it goes further then that in that saturated soil conditions at times are the real cause of BER. Due to my sand in ground, and fast draining container medium, I never experience saturated conditions, and hence no BER.

I have rampant BER on one of my opalka plants, but very little to none on the other five opalkas and they're pretty much 3 feet apart. And I don't have clay soil. Still, I always expect some BER early in the season, and though it's been hot with very little rain this year the BER is not as much of a problem as it's been in other years -- again, mostly the one plant. Strangely, this is one of the first years I didn't mix bone meal in when I planted, but I did fertilize the whole patch with a 10-10-10 roughly three weeks before planting out.

Copoman your post is interesting and could explain why I get BER mainly early in the season when we have more rain here and my pots do not dry out as much as later when the plants are using more water and getting less as they do not get watered during the day.

I might just be a little over-eager novice seed saver, but maybe this represents an opportunity. If you have a lot of BER disease pressure now and you still have plants without it, perhaps saving seed from those plants will help you get a stock for next year that are better adapted to survive in your local disease/environmental conditions.

Yes, I'm sure genetics has to do with sensitivity to BER. That being said though, even "sensitive" plants have less BER in well drained soil conditions. I would suggest anyone make sure they are planting in well drained medium, whether in containers or in ground for most plants. You don't just avoid BER, but you also have less troubles with pests and fungi. Yes, you do have to water more often in well drained medium, but I'd rather be watering my plants, then dealing with BER, fungal issues, earwigs, snails and slugs, fungus gnats among many other issues. Gardening is just plain easier in a well drained medium.

I've had BER a few time and have been told everything from not enough calcium (bought calcium carbonate from the oyster store nearby) to uneven watering (have since controlled the watering with a soaker hose) I also use my own compost and organic manures from local farms.
Usually my BER only lasts a couple of weeks. I just dump a bunch more compost on everything and hope for the best! LOL
I have since read that you want to incorporate your calcium carbonate (oyster shells)in the fall in order for it to be absorbed by planting time in the spring.
I tend to just sprinkle it around though the year and hope I'm doing the right thing! Nancy

Sorry Nancy, adding calcium usually doesn't resolve BER. Better control of moisture conditions usually resolves it. See the FAQ.