[timcunningham]

Mattermama,

One thing I found from hard learned experience is not to make my soil too fertilizer rich.

Last year I had two tomatoes each in 18 Gal Container. I used a mix of Peat Moss / Vermiculite / Compost. The compost I used was mixture of mushroom compost / cow manure / and homemade compost. So my soil is already is a lot more rich than regular potting mix. To that I added the fertilzer strip of 10-10-10 about 2 cups.

I had the worst Blossom End Rot, which I believe was cause by over fertizilation. So I added some lime to the resevior and dug up the fertilizer strip and filled it in with peatmoss. Eventually the BER cleared up.

This year I did an experiment, one container with store bought potting mix and granulated fertilizer, one with very rich composted soil - no fetilizer, one "over fertilized" like last year.

So far the overfertilized box has BER pretty bad, so I once again did the remedy I did last year. The other two I see no BER and no big difference in production.

Certainly not a scientific experiment, but it does confirm my gut feeling.