Advice from Baytree Garden Centre in Weston on growing healthy tomatoes

Growing and looking after tomatoes is the discussion in this week’s Out in the Garden column, by Mark Cox, of Baytree Nurseries, Weston...

This morning I was rudely awoken by Teddy the dog licking choc chip cookie biscuit crumbs off my face. I can only assume I’d been sleep eating again.

So once de-cookied and dressed I headed out to my local supermarket which may or may not rhyme with Dorrisons for my weekly shop. It was whilst browsing for frozen fish fingers that, without warning, I was confronted by what I now know was an adoring fan. “It’s you isn’t it?” she said, “it is, I know it’s you, you’re the garden man and may I say you’re a bit of a hunk too.” She didn’t say the hunk bit but I sensed she wanted to.

To be fair at this point I thought she just wanted an autograph as this happens now all too often, but it was whist readying the sharpie marker that I carry with me for such occasions that Anne told me that she had a leathery, sunken bottom which was getting darker.

I tried really hard to not form a mental picture of Anne‘s leathery bottom but it was too late, the image was formed. Sensing that something was wrong, Anne took a couple of steps backwards. She could obviously see the blood draining away from my face as it turned from golden brown to grey in just a few seconds.

As consciousness began to leave my body I could see Anne rummaging through her handbag and I thought she must be looking for smelling salts just in case I passed out. But to my surprise she pulled out her mobile phone and began to show me several photos on her mobile device.

Before looking down at the images I knew this could go one of two ways but to my great surprise I was spared the nightmare that I had envisaged.

“Ah,” I said. You’ve got “blossom end rot on those tomatoes.” With blood and colour returning to my cheeks, I felt quite the Gardeners World presenter as I explained to Anne that blossom end rot is caused by a shortage of calcium as the tomato fruit grows. Without the calcium, cells within the tomato die and rot. It’s exacerbated by dry conditions. When the ground is really dry, the roots cannot get the nutrients they need. Anne looked at me as if to say, “But it rained yesterday”.

Although it has been raining, Anne had been growing her Beefsteak tomatoes in growbags and because of that the rain water was only able to penetrate the soil in a small section. Beefsteak tomatoes are very susceptible to blossom end rot anyway so her growbags had created the perfect conditions for it. The best advice I could give her was to open the growbag up a little more and remove one of the plants so that she had two in the growbag instead of three. By sacrificing one of these plants now there will be far less competition for moisture and nutrients. I told her to remove the affected fruit and to keep the grow bag evenly moist.

Going forwards for next year it is best to either grow large fruiting varieties of tomatoes such as beefsteak in a big 30 litre pot or plant them directly into a border where you can keep the roots uniformly moist.

Next week I’m off to Metheringham to meet Anne’s gardening group as she told me that they were all big fans of mine. As a local superstar I feel it’s important not to disappoint your fan base.