Why do tomatoes rot on a branch?

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Tomatoes - these plants are known to everyone - are in every garden, and sometimes a significant place is assigned to them. Tomatoes grow both in open ground and in greenhouses. In some years, the gardener can get a wonderful, just perfect crop of tomatoes, and in other seasons, almost all the fruits on the branches suddenly begin to rot, and it seems that the gardener is doing everything right, but the problem is not fixed. Why is this happening and what to do with it, today we will try to figure it out.

Content:

How does the infection of tomato fruits rot?
Phytophthora - the main cause of rot of tomatoes in the open ground
Vertex rot - the main cause of rot of tomato fruits in the greenhouse
Common causes of rot and greenhouse tomatoes, and open ground

How does the infection of tomato fruits rot?

It is clear that we are dealing with rot, and rot is not only a danger of the current season: spores winter well in the soil and can show themselves in the next year, and rot on the fruits will reappear, possibly with a vengeance.

Typically, tomato rot is caused by diseases such as late blight, alternariosis, vertex rot, as well as a wide variety of bacterioses. In most cases, these diseases attack the fruits of the tomato, but there are exceptions when the disease can affect the leaf, thereby delivering a double blow - inhibiting photosynthesis, and sometimes the disease gets to the stem of the plant, and then it can die completely in a matter of days.

Most often, the fungus gets randomly from infected land, can be transmitted by air, as well as during green operations with bushes, when, without treating the working tool with alcohol, the gardener moves from a sick plant to a healthy one, thereby infecting it.

It is clear that plants that grow on poor soil, lack moisture or some kind of nutrient in the ground begin to hurt faster than anyone, that is, with their low immunity. In particular, plants growing on soils, where there is an acute deficit of elements such as calcium and potassium, where crop rotation is not observed, or elementary rules of agricultural technology, are affected by rotten fruit.

Phytophthora - the main cause of rot of tomatoes in the open ground

The main reason is late blight. Initially, small, sometimes even invisible with the naked eye black dots appear on the fruits of the tomato, and they can appear both on the leaves and trunk, and immediately on the leaves, trunk and tomatoes.

A few days later, at the base of the tomato fruit, it will be easy to notice with a naked eye a dark spot, often having a brownish color, it is increasing every day, literally before our eyes, covering the larger and larger part of the fruit.

After a couple of days, this stain will turn black when this happens, it is better to discard the fruit for the simple reason that decay has reached its inner part and internal decay has already begun.

Under what conditions does late blight develop?

Phytophthora is especially active in seasons or parts of the growing season, when air and soil humidity is too high, it can rain for at least a couple of times a week, and the temperature does not rise above twenty degrees Celsius.

There are opposite incidents: if wet and damp weather suddenly changes to dry and hot, then late blight is so slow that it does not develop further, and the affected areas of tomato fruits may even cork.

Against late blight, it is better to use fungicides that are approved and approved for use at this stage of development of the tomato fruit.

Do not forget that the spores of this disease are stored for a long time in the soil layer, so treat the soil with fungicides even before planting seedlings on the site.

Phytophthora prevention

Before you start to fight late blight, you can try to prevent it from appearing on your plants. For example, a very good prophylaxis is the treatment with bio-fungicides of plants planted after 12-14 days to a permanent place.

Naturally, we don’t forget about Bordeaux liquid, you can use its 1% solution and first treat it 10 days after transplanting, and then - 20 days after transplanting.

Fans of natural remedies use an infusion of garlic, for this in a bucket of water you need to dilute a glass of well-ground cloves of garlic and literally 0.5 grams of potassium permanganate. This composition should be allowed to infuse for a day, after which it is filtered, diluted twice with water and plants can be treated once a week until the risk of the disease disappears.

Simultaneously with this treatment, it is desirable to feed the plants diluted in water with potassium sulfate and well-diluted superphosphate in water in an amount of 5-6 g per bucket of water. Superphosphate does not dissolve well in water, so it must first be dissolved in boiling water, and then pour the composition into water.

To generally strengthen the immunity of plants, periodically, at least once a week, they need to be treated with preparations of the Epina type.

How to deal with late blight on tomato fruits?

If phytophthora is already present, it is necessary to collect brown fruits and lay them for ripening, if they are not affected, of course, and try to save the affected ones by treating with 1% Bordeaux liquid, trying to get to the foci of infection.

Processing is best done in the evening, after a hot day. Bordeaux liquid, by the way, can be used three days before the fruit is picked, other fungicides may have longer periods of action, you need to read about this on the packaging.

Almost nothing is said about bio-fungicides: for example, their advantage is that they have no or very short waiting time from processing to consumption.

Vertex rot - the main cause of rot of tomato fruits in the greenhouse

In the greenhouse, vermin rot is a real scourge of tomato fruits; it also leads to rotting of tomato fruits in most of these plants.

First, barely noticeable brownish spots suddenly appear on completely still green tomato fruits, they grow every day, increasing in diameter with the development of the fruit itself. If you pick this fruit and hold it in your hands, press the pulp, then under the skin you will definitely feel the excessive softness that is not typical for a tomato fruit - this means that all or most of it has rotted and is completely unsuitable for food. It remains only to throw them away.

By the way, tomato fruits affected by vertex rot often themselves signal that it is time to take them to the trash: with a strong infection, they are trivially showered from the plant long before the fruit is fully ripe.

You should know, however, that the top rot of tomato fruits is not an infectious disease, as many believe, most often the disease occurs due to errors with watering tomato plants, as well as at excessively high temperatures.

For example, you arrived at the dacha for only one day off and realized that the soil in the area where the tomatoes grow was critically dry, possibly even cracked. What are you going to do? Of course, immediately, as abundantly as possible, pour the soil under the bushes in order to return to it a normal level of humidity. It is categorically impossible to do this: from a sharp excess of moisture, the fruits can quickly increase in size, the peel on their top will not stand and crack, the infection will fall into it and the top rot will develop.

Of course, the cause of infection of tomatoes with top rot can not be a gardener at all, for example, plants growing on saline or acidic soil, on soil where there is an acute calcium deficiency or, conversely, an excess of such an element as nitrogen, suffer from such a disease.

Fighting vertex rot on tomatoes

To combat top rot with the very first symptoms, it is necessary to treat the plants a couple of times with calcium nitrate, diluted in a concentration of 0.4%. In this case, calcium sulfate is also suitable. It should be diluted in an amount of 8 g in a bucket of water and thoroughly sprayed on each plant, repeating the treatment after a week.

Naturally, do not forget about crop rotation, that plants need not to be thickened, and use only new varieties that have high immunity, that is, resistance to such diseases.

Common causes of rot and greenhouse tomatoes, and open ground

Alternariosis

A very common reason that tomatoes on a branch in plants growing both in open ground and in a greenhouse begin to rot is alternariosis. This is a disease, and its pathogen simply adores the abundance of heat when the temperature outside the window stably stays at around 26 to 31 degrees above zero.

By the way, this disease most often affects tomatoes growing in the southern regions of our country, however, it also occurs in some years in the central zone. Alternaria develops especially actively in central Russia when frequent and very plentiful dew occurs, when it rains lightly but for a long time, that is, the air is literally saturated with moisture when it seems to hang in the air.

The first signs of this disease can be found on completely green tomato fruits. One has only to take a closer look at the place at the stalk, as you will notice there at first very tiny, and then dark brown spots growing in size. If it rains during this period and the humidity is very high, then taking a tomato fruit in your hands, you can feel like it is velvet, like a peach. In fact, this fruit is completely covered with spores that, when ripe and a sharp gust of wind, will fly apart in different directions, infecting neighboring tomato fruits.

At the same time, spots on the leaves located at the very bottom of tomato plants can be noticed. First, the spots on the lower leaves are small, then they increase literally every day and eventually cover most of the leaf, nullifying the processes of photosynthesis and causing the death and decay of leaf blades.

You can cope with alternariosis with the same Bordeaux fluid as in the fight against late blight. But if you want alternariosis never to be on your site, then observe crop rotation, do not thicken plants, fight weeds, fertilize the soil and use new and modern varieties of tomatoes that have increased immunity, and, therefore, resistance to many diseases .

Bacteriosis

Let's start with bacterial necrosis, or hollow, or necrosis of the middle of the stem. It all starts with the unripe fruits of the tomato, if you take a closer look at them, you can easily see the whitish net, and on those fruits that have already ripened, upon careful examination, you can see a couple of brown rings in the place where the fruit was attached. If such a fruit is cut, a cloudy liquid will flow out of it, and, in general, there will be no hint of pulp inside.

It is interesting that if you just touch the affected fetus, it will fall off immediately, sometimes the infected fruits will fall off even from a slight breeze. Of course, such fruits must certainly be removed from the site and burned so that the infection does not get into the soil.

At the same time, the leaves of the affected plants, usually starting with the youngest, those located at the top, actively fade, even sometimes without changing color. If you look closely, then on the stalk of a tomato at about 20 cm in height you can see brownish spots. After only a few days, the stem bursts and a liquid similar to pus or mucus flows out of it.

Black spotting

Another disease from which tomatoes rot right on the branches is black spotting, and it does not matter where the plants grow in open or protected ground.

The first signs of the disease can be noticed if you carefully, possibly using a magnifying glass, consider very small darkish-green spots on the leaves. Of course, only a couple of days will pass and these spots will be significantly larger, and then turn black - it will ripen conidia, ready to fly long distances and infect neighboring fruits.

On the fruits, you can see at first shiny, like droplets of oil, specks having a convex surface, many even consider these spots to be a manifestation of scab.

To prevent the occurrence of this disease, you can not thicken the planting, you need to use crop rotation. The disease develops most actively during periods of heavy fog and the smallest rain with the wind, when spores fly apart over long distances.

If bacteriosis has already made its way to the site, then most often only the complete removal of plants from the garden helps. At the initial stages of the plant can be treated with Oxychoma, it is sold in tablets. One tablet is enough for a bucket of water, and a solution - for as many bushes as you can moisturize well by treating them from a spray bottle. After a couple of weeks, the treatment can be repeated.

Important: “Oksikhom” you can process the fruit no later than three weeks before harvesting.

After collecting the entire crop, the old tops, leaves and fruits must be removed from the site.

Conclusion So, we figured out the causes of rotting of tomato fruits on the branches, and how to prevent an outbreak of a disease, how to cure plants. Every year, more and more new drugs are added in the fight against certain diseases, but you need to be careful with their use and, if possible, use exclusively folk remedies.