As I noted earlier, my primary Black Krim tomato plant began to suffer from BER late in the season. From what I've read, BER typically strikes plants in their early growth stages but this by no means absolves them of sensitivity to it later on.
I ended up removing 8 tomatoes that were suffering from BER and later on discovered another 4 that had succumbed to it. At this point, there's about a handful of tomatoes left growing on this enormous plant. It would seem almost a waste to keep it going... all of that watering and nutrients needed for a huge plant that has barely a half-dozen fruits on it. And at this point, it's too late in the season to be concerned with pollinating any flowers. Anyway, after a long examination, I found a few more small tomatoes and I've determined that there's enough of a healthy crop to keep it going.
And that leaves me with the small sucker that I'd rooted and kept "dwarfed" for about a month. I'd transplanted it in a larger pot when I noticed 3 tomatoes having set. I figured why not get a couple of extra fruits for just a bit of watering and fertilizer? Wrong. All of the sudden I saw it--the dreaded BER. Bottoms of the tomatoes turning brown. All three of them. "Gosh darn it!" (instead of a string of curses). It's just too late in the season now, even though I could have continued nursing it indoors. I raised it from the pot, put it in a plastic bag, and tossed it outside. Amazingly enough, one week later and the plant is still alive and the BER inflicted tomatoes have remained unchanged. It's sad, but there's just not enough time for it to grow new fruit...
There is one important consideration with tomatoes, and that is the genetic strain of a given variety. Apparently they are not all created equal. Some strains will be a little less resistant to disease and other maladies, while others will be more hearty/robust. I've read up quite a bit on postings from seasoned tomato growers and it's not a shallow subject by any means. The operative word is "stabilization". Some strains floating about in the wild are simply not as stable as others. And you can see this exhibited in various forms. One such characteristic is the appearance of peculiar looking fruits (what some call "cat faced") among the normal ones. This is the result of environmental issues at pollination time (such as too much nitrogen, low temperatures, etc). A heartier strain will require more taxing conditions to cause the cat-facing of tomatoes, while others will almost always churn out a few of these oddities during the growing season.
But moving onward, I'm really looking forward to the coming weeks as I finally get to harvest some of the largest Black Krim fruits I've seen yet. The first rooted sucker I've had going has definitely outpaced the parent plant not only on the volume of tomatoes but their size as well. This speaks volumes about how important soil and fertilizer is and experiencing it first hand has really "driven it home".
This photo was taken about 10 days ago as of this posting and their even larger. I will definitely weigh them once off the vine, to see just how hefty they actually are (maybe 12 oz?). The first sign of blushing appeared on one of the smaller tomatoes, so these should be catching up in the next week or two.
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