[cythaenopsis]

Wow... I feel bad for my friend who I'd mentioned is growing 2 tomato varieties in a Grow Box. I just inspected his tomato plants and they are suffering a rather nasty bout of BER. It's one of those insidious afflictions. You look at your tomatoes from a distance and they look just fine, even from the sides. But then if you lift up an afflicted tomato, you can't miss that brown patch.

This is a prime example of what can go wrong if you use a Grow Box and expect that all you have to do is just water. He hasn't pruned one sucker--none whatsoever. "The GrowBox gives you all the nutrients you need for the whole season--let your plants grow, grow, grow!" You wouldn't believe the overgrown bush he has now. A notable number of branches buried under the canopy of foliage withered away. And those tomatoes just look sad. There is a good number of them that are healthy, but who knows if they'll succumb to the affliction as well.


"It's a jungle out there!"












"Dried out leaves inside the tomato cave."






"It's insidious. It's the ugly side of brown. It is blossom-end-rot."










Anyway, I'd rather have a smaller healthy crop than a larger one with more than half suffering from BER. In all honesty, I tried to offer up some advice on what to do and he decided that he'll figure it out his own way. He knows I'm new at tomato growing and since I didn't go with his advice on a Grow Box, I'm apparently not in a position to advise.