I agree about the soil, but I didn't know better when I bought it and everything was perfect until now. The two major things that happened right before this happened is I used the organic plant food concentrate and the soil dried out. I usually water in the morning but didn't get to watering until around noon. The leaves looked wilted when I went to water. Is it possible that the plant food or drying out would cause such quick damage? One of the tomatoes I pulled earlier today was definitely suffering from blossom end rot. The second one didn't look the same. The first one had that darkening flat area at the blossom end, but the second one had a dark ope,n sunken area in the middle of the fruit. Can that be a sign of blossom end rot as well? Could Fusarium crown and root rot or even fusarim wilt be the cause? Ive been doing so much reading and still can't figure out what went wrong and why. In any case, what can I do to improve this situation? Upon examining the tomatoes, I noticed several have the little dark spots towards the bottom. Is it hopeless for them? They only have one or a few dark little spots. Will the spots keep growing in size or is there a way I can stop it before it destroys the tomato? Also, the newer tomatoes don't have any spots and look good so far. Should I buy some kind of lime to increase the calcium? Upon further examination of the plants, I also noticed small dark spots on some leaves. *sigh* --Maggie

You have two threads going on this issue. This being the newest, I'll post here. As noted, you don't say whether this plant started with you as a container grown specimen (came with all its roots) or whether it started with you as a B&B plant (truncated root system, needing recovery). That can inform opinions offered and recommendations therefrom. Your soil pH would be interesting to know, but not necessarily germane to growing this species. Texts say it prefers acid soils that are well-drained, but I've grown it on absolute limestone soils to various circumneutral sites with well-drained to heavy B-horizon clay loams - like here at the Valley, where I've grown over a hundred of these, with the oldest now for over twenty years. I really don't think that bit of yellowing is a matter for concern. It could be a nutrient deficiency that came with container culture; it could be a bit of heat stress that affected that set of leaves as they were forming. I would continue with some iron sulfate if your pH is circumneutral; it won't hurt a thing. Some 10-10-10 in spring as it leafs out and in summer will assist in establishment, as Aesculus parviflora is a gross feeder and robust grower. Given your site description, I'm interested in how you plan to manage this as it matures. As a small canopy tree? Here are some happy old Bottlebrush Buckeyes, doing their summer thing at the Valley...

Before adding anything, I'd wait to see if letting it dry a bit helps. Too much water isn't usually a problem in the intermountain west, but it can be if you water too much. Too much water can cause yellowing in leaves pretty quickly. On the bright side, it doesn't often take very long for things to dry out around here.

Holly, Sorry about your Cherokee Green. Brown stain in the stalk! Yikes, but that probably nails it down. As for products purporting to be for sealing tree wounds, they are superfluous and probably cause more damage than good. At least the generally accepted standard among tree people is that they should not be used. Of course, manufacturers still make them and sell them and they can say anything on the label that they wish to. I'm just trying to keep in mind that plant physiology is very different from the physiology of human beings. But now, back to VW. My question and possibly yours now, is what to do about it. I've done a lot of searching and find a couple of possibilities. Two of them are solarization and biofumigation, neither of which is likely to be easy. Considering that the VW stays in the soil for many years it seems unacceptable to just go ahead and plant again next year. If I suppose that my "recovering" tomato plants make a few blossoms in the next week or so then I can hope to have my first "real" tomatoes of the year sometime in the back half of September and then expect frost a few weeks later. That's really sad after all the work involved. So, I'm looking for an answer. Most of the solarization and biofumigation I've seen is done on a very large scale and I'm not sure how well it can be adapted to a smaller garden. If anyone is interested, I can post some of the urls I've found. Also, if anyone else has information or experience in these techniques, I'd like to see it. Possibly in a new thread. What do you all think?