Physiological problems

I'm starting to see some more problems with the tomatoes. Physiological diseases are not spread from plant to plant and only affect the original plant. They are caused by environmental conditions. Half of my 8 plants have been stricken with leaf roll for weeks. This causes nearly all the leaves on the plant to cup upwards or roll up completely. This is a moisture related problem that happens most often during periods of "cool, rainy weather". Sounds like our early summer. Apparently it doesn't have any effect on production, and sometimes they will unroll after poor conditions subside, so I'm not worried about it.

Leaf roll on a Stupice plant.

A more serious problem I'm seeing on some plants is blossom end rot. Fruits develop black sunken lesions on the end opposite the stem. It's caused by a calcium deficiency. The most common cause is inadequate moisture or cooler temperatures during blossom setting which inhibits calcium uptake to the rapidly growing end of the fruit. In my case, planting early in cooler, slightly heavy soil that probably doesn't have the best drainage was most likely the cause. Usually only the first set if fruits are affected.

This Cherokee purple fruit has blossom end rot and cat-facing.

My last issue is leaves with purple undersides or purple veining. This is a phosphorus deficiency. I used a 5-5-5 fertilizer at transplanting time and have since side-dressed with a low nitrogen, high phosphorus fertilizer, so it is present in the soil. Soils with low pH (like clay soils) tend to hold on to phosphorus and not release it for plants, so when I prepared the bed in the spring I amended with lime to raise the pH, so that shouldn't be an issue either. The only other cause is cool soil and air temperatures. I'm starting to see a trend here!


Hopefully, warm weather for the end of July through August will help the plants overcome all these issues.