 My name is Tyler Mason. I'm an urban regional extension agent housed in Jefferson and Tuscaloosa counties. Today we're at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens in the Bruno Vegetable Garden and we're starting to see a physiological problem occurring on the tomatoes. And a lot of people would look at this tomato and think, you know, there's some sort of disease that's happening. And it looks like a disease. It's called blossom and rot because you can see that the blossom end of the tomato fruit is starting to get soft and squishy. And you can see that when we look at the underneath side of the tomato here, we have this fruit that's unaffected. It's healthy. It's doing well. And then when we look at the fruit that's the next set down, we see that each tomato is affected. And you can see that it's a blossom side and the rot that's occurring. And then when we look a little bit lower, we see even more severe damage. People often call and want to know what they can do to treat blossom and rot on their tomatoes. But really what's happened and the culprit for the problem is that there was inconsistent soil moisture. About two weeks ago, the water was off at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens to do some outside construction work. And we weren't able to water the garden for a week. So the soil dried out. And what happens is when the soil dries out, there's not enough water to move the calcium from where it's located, the source to the sink of the tomato fruit. And we see this localized physiological problem that looks like rot. So what looks like a disease is actually a physiological problem caused by inconsistent soil moisture. So one of the best things that you can do for your tomato plants is water regularly and thoroughly and a moist well-drained soil. You might even consider mulching them.