The dreaded blossom end rot

Oh no! Our Cherokee Purple has been stricken with blossom end rot. We thought we'd beat the dreaded tomato disease by fertilizing early with Hoffman Tomato Food 5 10 10, a mixture that's 5% nitrogen, 10% phosphate and 10% potash (see my earlier post on the subject.) Yet, there it is, on the bottoms of our big beefsteaks. 

The good news: only a handful of the Cherokee tomatoes are affected. It's often the early fruit that gets marked. The best remedy is to clip the diseased fruit off the vines so the energy goes into newer, healthy production. And in fact, the younger tomatoes on our Cherokee plant are growing rot free.

Even better, our other tomato plants are entirely free of the unsightly blemishes. The Brandywines are growing beautifully, as are the German greens and the black and yellow cherries. We can't wait to harvest them. The big black cherries are almost vine ripened and ready for picking.