Jeanne, I grow some strawberries in the same bed as blueberries and it has a very low pH, so I doubt pH is the problem. Based on the lack of deformity I now doubt that it is an insect pest. I also get a few later berries that are lacking in any kind of flavor, are small, and have lots of seeds. You could just be getting a lot more of those than usual. My reading on those berries is the plant decided to move on to working on growing its leaves and put only a half-effort into the berry. I don't know what would make more of those berries than usual. Perhaps it is a feature of the variety you are growing, or something about the nutrition it is getting from the soil. Scott

Hi GreenDreamHome: Perhaps the previous home-owner over-applied fertilizer to that rose. Some roses are more susceptible to salt-damage. Knock-outs can take salt-abuse, but certain roses can't. The 1st picture looks like fertilizer burn. I got the same when I mixed 1/2 horse manure into the planting hole .. horse manure has high pH, plus 10% salt. No amount of rain could undo that, so I had to replace the soil. Luckily the rose was small, so I could dig it up, rinsed the root-ball in a bucket of water, and planted in new soil. Someone in Florida once posted similar pics of leaves with big brown spots .. she mixed 1/2 cow manure (alkaline & salty) with her sandy Florida soil. I did that to my lawn recently .. there was left-over soluble acid-fertilizer 32-10-10, so I used a flour-duster to sprinkle on my lawn. I spilled a bit, so there's this big-brown-spot .. still there despite this rainy month. The second picture looks like my Sharifa Asma when I over-dosed on molasses (high in iron). Same with last year when I gave Gina's rose soluble molasses without watering her first. The molasses-brown-spots are easy to fix: tons of watering, the Gina's rose was OK ... when I dug her up to give away, the roots was huge. In hot climate, the soil tends to be more salty. I don't fertilize when the temp. is over 80 degree, and if I do, I water first, apply very diluted soluble, then water again. If your soil is rock-hard-clay and very alkaline like mine, then gypsum (22% calcium, 17% sulfur, and 8% salt) is recommended to break-up heavy clay and to de-salt ... best used as soluble in cool temp. If your soil is loamy, sodic (salty), and less alkaline .. skip the gypsum. Good luck with your roses ... the second picture is easy to fix. The first picture, if only a few brown spots, lots of watering will do. But if it's over 10 brown-spots like what I did, then I had to replace the soil. This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Wed, Jun 11, 14 at 11:33

I am growing tomatoes indoors under a HID light in soil. I am really new to this and have virtually no experience. Anyway, all of the sudden, my tomato plant started to turn brownish purple at the soil line and just above. I assume that the plant would have been permanently stunted or would die. Can anyone identify what is going on here? Thanks! Image link:

Thanks so much for that...another nugget of information! That makes me wonder more if it has to do with the defrost thing...that the cooling isn't kicking back on. The repair guy said the defrost cycles on automatically after the compressor has run for 100 hours. Since this happened four days after it was installed, that seems close. Maybe we'll know if it happens again in another four days or so.