By anonymous
Vels winter aerogarden
Submitted on Sun, 2010/05/16 - 4:40pm
Got my aerogarden in Feb as a gift from my husband. thinking we could have fresh tomatoes etc in the yukon winter.
Tomatoes started out well untill i realized that they were getting too tall and i had not pruned properly. kinda desimated 1
and pruned the other one ok. the bad one did not recover well but the other one grew great. medium sized tomatoes that
have not yet rippened. Now they have bloom rot on the bottoms and i looked it up and its because of lack of calcium.will
get tums or ebsom salts to help them and hope the rest are ok. Has been about 93 days since planting so hopefully
there will be some ripe tomatoes soon. thinking ill have flowers when these are done for the winter. Some color in a dark,
white, green place.
Sun, 2010/05/16 - 8:37pm
#2
Welcome, Vels!
Yeah, sounds like the Yukon would be a great place for an Aerogarden. 
My daughter and I visited Caribou Crossing (or Carcross ?) a couple years ago. Bright and hot in late June! Bet that doesn't last long, though...
Another source of blossom end rot, btw, seems to be too much fertilizer. Are you using Aerogarden nutes? If so, before adding anything, I'd dump all liquids and start with fresh water and nutes, and leave it for a week or so. AG tomatoes need all their liquids dumped at least once a month, though the instructions don't tell you so. Just adding nutes biweekly for that long, without dumping, makes the reservoir kinda toxic.
Sun, 2010/05/16 - 11:53pm
#3
thank you for the info, kinda makes sence to change the water, but do not think its possible, guess i could drain it with a
small hose and put fresh in. and i will even go with the tums just incase.
Mon, 2010/05/17 - 12:24pm
#4
Vels - exactly, I use some tubing to syphon out the liquids. Kind of a pain, but it needs to be done, and it's easier than carrying/dumping the reservoir with so much plant in it.
Up to you, but I'd wait on the tums for at least a week, especially since you don't know what the right dosage is.
Mon, 2010/05/17 - 8:14pm
#5
good point. have not had the time to do it yet but this weekend i will do it for sure. Tomatoes are too nice to let get messed up.
Tue, 2010/05/18 - 3:26am
#6
Well, I'm going to throw my hat into the pot, too, sorry! 
You are all right about the remedies for blossom end rot,
which I understand is also caused by irregular feeding/watering at fruiting time,
mainly by a soaking and relative drought causing the fruit to swell
unevenly and in spurts thus breaking the skin. Kevin
Fri, 2010/05/21 - 8:35pm
#7
well i finally got all the water out of the aerogarden, had to use a syringe that i use for my dogs to give meds. lol
took a while but good. put in fresh water and a "vitamin" and a tums. ! tomatoe is getting red now
and i hope the change of water will stop the bloom rot. time will tell.
Hello Vels and welcome.
Sorry to hear about your bloom rot on your tomatoes, your diagnosis is spot on with the lack of calcium - sometimes the AeroGarden tablets cannot provide enough of this mineral.
Will you be using both Tums and Epsom together as a form of cal/mag supplement? Using the Epsom on it's own won't give you the calcium portion you want - it's mostly magnesium based.
Good luck with your tomatoes, I hope they recover and you can enjoy them after all.