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Crocus Fruit Cracking, Rot and Deformities: Causes & How to Fix It

The fruit of your crocus is rotting at the tip, splitting, misshapen, or hollow inside. Fruit problems are more often about water, calcium, and pollination than disease, so the fix is usually in how you grow rather than what you spray.

Check these first

  • Does the rot start at the blossom end or from a wound?
  • Was there heavy rain or uneven watering just before the fruit split?
  • What were the temperatures and pollination conditions when it flowered?

Most likely causes

From the pests and diseases recorded for this plant, the ones whose symptoms match, most serious first. Symptoms alone rarely confirm a cause, so use the linked page to check the signs and treatment.

Bacterial Soft Rot

The crown or the head becomes water-soaked and soft, then collapses into a slimy mush. The rotting tissue gives off a distinctive foul odor.

General description; not specific to this plant.

How to identify and treat: Bacterial Soft Rot

Gray Mold

Water-soaked brown lesions form on flowers, fruit and leaves, densely covered by a fuzzy gray mold. Fruit rots and drops, and decay continues in storage after harvest.

General description; not specific to this plant.

How to identify and treat: Gray Mold

Sclerotinia Rot

The crown, stem or head rots in a water-soaked way and is covered in white cottony mycelium. Black sclerotia later form inside and on the surface, and the plant wilts and dies.

General description; not specific to this plant.

How to identify and treat: Sclerotinia Rot

Other possible causes

The three above are the causes on record for this symptom.

What other growers did about it

A page like this one can tell you what crocus fruit cracking, rot and deformities is and what to try. What it cannot tell you is what actually happened to someone who had it on the same plant, at the same point in the season, and what they did next.

Gadenin is a free garden journal built around that. You photograph the plant, tag what you are seeing, and the entries line up by date for each plant you grow.

  • Tag the problem and the app tells you how many other growers have logged the same thing on the same plant.
  • Growers who make their records public can be followed, so you can read what they did and how it turned out.
  • Next season your own entries come back at the same point in the year, so you check the plant before it starts.

Free on iPhone. Recording, tagging and reading public records cost nothing.

Read next

Record watering dates and rainfall alongside photos of the fruit. Cracking and blossom-end rot almost always trace back to a swing in water supply.

See what other growers did about it

Log it in the free Gadenin app and tag what you are seeing. Your photos line up by date so you can tell whether it is spreading, and you can see how many other growers have logged the same problem on the same plant, follow them and read what they did next.

Free on iPhone. Android coming later.

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