Blossom End Rot

14 years ago

Problems again this year with BER on tomatoes. Full sun on south facing porch, 10 hydrofarm units hooked to main reservoir with float valve controller. 6" airstone running all the time in bottom of each bucket. Feed 3 hours at a time 3 times a day. No problem with getting fast veg growth and large caged plants early, but when they start producing in the hot summer, BER is pretty bad. Noticed the PPM goes over 4000 and the ph down to 4 in just a couple days. Been adding 20ml of cal mag to each 5 gallon bucket of mixed nutes about 2300ppm total. Have a new plan to shut off the main reservoir until the nutes get low in each bucket, then turn it on and let the float valve fill each back up again. Every other time when the buckets are low on nutes, will water by hand with about 1500ppm Cal mag from top of each bucket to normal 6" level. Also spray a weak cal mag solution on fruit and leaves early mornings. Thats plan B in the works, just been a couple days. Do you think the 95 degree air temps, and 80 degree water temps are to blame? Maybe the controller setup is not getting fresh nutes to all the individual buckets at the same time? More cal mag, like 40ml to each 5 gal of nutes? Seems like this waterfarm method turns into a DWC system when the roots fill the bottom of reservoir, so thats why I put in the airstones. Any advice on this type system will be appreciated. Should have went with the dutch bucket method and an underground reservoir that large ice blocks (frozen nutes) can be added would be much better setup for extreme heat.

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Comments (4)

shelbyguy
14 years ago
adding more of something that is locked out wont force it into the plant.

if you load it up with calcium, you need to add nitrogen too in order to retain the 1:1 balance between Ca and N

calmag has tons of n in it because its calcium nitrate, but its up to you to make sure you dont throw your ratios out or balance.

and yes, you really need to get the root temps down. its the high root temps that is causing teh BER.
myron26155
14 years ago
I agree with ShelbyGuy, the blossom end rot may not have anything to do with calcium in your case. The high root temps will also cause BER although some will disagree.

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gringojay
14 years ago
Hi robertlw,
Your reservoir management tactic is confusing.
For less problems you can dump everything & start with fresh nutrient solution that you can easier pH adjust. The ppm sounds hard to manage & aside from a total measure you really have no idea what is the individual nutrients' % .
Foliar feeding is probably more for your sense of well being, than actually going to be important to the plant at this stage.
Remember, when in doubt flush it out (your growing medium & reservoir); then try to do better (periodic nutrient solution changes). BER is not fatal to the plant, it can become productive.
joe.jr317
14 years ago
I agree that high water temps can cause BER, too. I'm experiencing that right now. I procrastinated on getting an insulating barrier in front of my latest setup. Some of the buckets are black. As soon as I saw that the temps were 85 degrees, I knew I was about to find BER. Sure enough, the newest fruit have a problem. The last couple weeks have been hectic and I have seriously neglected my hydro system.