I & H wrote:

I'm trying to save my plum tomatoes which I think are indeed suffering from
blossom end rot. Can I pick them green and plump, but before the rot is
evident, and ripen them in brown paper bags or on my windowsill? Will the
rot still come out?
Or, shall I let them ripen on the vine and then cut off the bottoms and use
them anyways for cooking. I'm hoping to salvage a massive batch of sauce I
have planned. There is a lot of advice about preventing the rot for future
years, but I still don't know if the crop is completely lost or if I will be
able to use the fruit.
Thanks for iding the problem!
-Holly



In our experience its kind of a hard one to call as not all of the fruit
will suffer from the rot. You may be picking many that will ripen just
fine. Also, it seems the rot causes the fruit to prematurely ripen so if
you pick them before the rot is apparent you may be picking fruit that
are so premature they will never ripen.

Depending on where you are and how much season you have left I would
suggest picking up a foliar spray for the BER and or putting some
dolamitic lime around the base of the plants. Many times the BER is
caused by weather/water but often times it can be due to calcium
deficiency. Fine ground dolamitic lime can be taken up by the plants in
2 weeks and from what I hear the foliar spray can be even faster. We had
pretty serious BER on our italian paste's and I hit them with the lime a
couple weeks ago and the yield is up markedly already.

Just my .02,
Mark