To me the criteria that most matters is the taste. If this one doesn’t pass the test I won’t plant it again. I do like that it is a heirloom determinate and loads up with a lot of tomatoes early. I have three of these planted and this is the largest at about 18” high. I’m thinking as these ripen the plant will be finished. If I like it I will save some seeds for another planting if not I will move on to other varieties. I currently have 9 Celebrity, 2 Rutgers, and 2 Bush Goliath growing so I have a few backups.
A real simply strategy I’ve found is when I finish a jug of milk to not rinse it out, and instead fill it with tap water, and then I water the plants with that milky water. 1-2 applications usually does it in my experience.
BER is a physiological condition, not a disease. It is tissue breakdown in the fruit from an imbalance of calcium. Tomato plants are inefficient transporting calcium so anything that disrupts the process results in BER. What can you do? Add calcium as a foliar spray is the first and best option. It is available at most garden centers. Now, here is the rest of the story. There is a cluster of genes on chromosome 5 that heavily impact calcium transfer. Paste tomatoes concentrate those genes in such a way that it is almost impossible to eliminate BER on paste varieties. BUT! It gets better with time. Usually the first fruits to ripen are affected but then the plant manages to provide enough calcium for the remaining fruit. Determinate tomatoes are more likely to have BER than indeterminate. This is because the fruit load on determinate plants for a short period of time is heavier. More fruit load = more demand for calcium = something already in short supply just went too low.
Someone mentioned good flavored early tomatoes. I highly recommend Bloody Butcher and Gregori’s Altai. I’ve grown 50 or 60 early maturing varieties over the years and to be blunt about it, most of them are as insipid as grocery store tomatoes. Bloody Butcher and Gregori’s Altai are widely adapted and produce good flavored fruit in most places where they have been grown.
Back in the early fifty’s we planted Fireball early tomatoes. They had great flavor and sold good at the market. Seems as though we got $8 per 8qt basket at the whole sale market. The tomatoes were round shaped and about the size of a tennis ball. The plants were not large but bore a fair sized crop. No staking required and easy to pick. My dad planted them between the rows of a new peach orchard till the peaches got bigger.
This is only my opinion, based on experience with no proof.
I have fusarium wilt and I also get BER but only on Roma type tomatoes. I’m convinced the BER is caused by the Fusarium wilt preventing nutrients and/or water from being absorbed.
It also causes splitting on heirloom tomatoes that have no resistance to Fusarium because of the inability to absorb properly.
When I plant hybrids with Fusarium resistance, I get no splitting or BER
Fusarium resistant plants have zilch to do with preventing BER. Commercial varieties have been selected for traits that minimize BER. Correlation does not equal causation meaning that fusarium resistance in tomatoes is not linked to preventing BER. Under the right conditions of climate and soil, all tomatoes have potential to get BER.
When I got my plot at the community garden 6 years ago, the soil had been worn out by what I would call a Miracle Grow farmer - basically doused everything with MG regularly to get growth, but didn’t do much to build the soil. The first year I grew Opalka, which is known to be very susceptible to BER, and hardly got a useable tomato. Most others did okay with regular watering, but Opalka didn’t improve no matter what I fertilized with or how regularly I tried to water.
Ever since getting the plot I’ve been cover cropping over the winter, chopping it down in the spring and mulching over with wood chips which pretty much completely rot down by the end of the season. Last year I dared to try Opalka again and had no BER, even with less than consistent watering.
I don’t know if it is the added organic matter, the improved soil biome or what, but it certainly has reinforced my belief in the value of no till and cover crops.
I agree. When I lived in Davis, I grew mostly paste tomatoes and fusarium resistant or not, I would get BER whenever we had very cool or very warm weather during early fruit development. The hybrids would get less BER than most of the heirloom pastes though, and when I started grafting my heirlooms due to nematode issues, BER rates decreased a bit as well.
The earliest batch of roma type tomatoes that develop early in the season, before the heat and fusarium combine to ensure less uptake of minerals and water, are perfectly fine but the tomatoes that develop later in the season higher up the plant are practically 100% affected by BER.
Sounds pretty convincing to me that Fusarium contributes to BER
Heat is one of the triggers for BER. It causes stress as the plant attempts to move water to the leaves which exacerbates calcium imbalance in the fruit. As above, spraying with calcium will usually prevent problems, even in 90+ temps.
Other factors with BER are soil very low in calcium or soil where calcium is tightly bound to insoluble minerals. Genetics plays a huge part, especially chromosome 5 which is highly linked to dense fruit with less water i.e. Roma type tomatoes.
Fusarium generally kills a plant dead. If the plant has a load of fruit, the fruit decays. It is not BER which affects the blossom end scar of the fruit. Fruit decay often starts at the stem.