Once upon a time, there was a tomato growing in my garden. It was beautiful and the first tomato of the season. Red and round and perfect, I was so looking forward to biting into it, letting that homegrown goodness slide down my taste buds. I watched it carefully, and when the day came to harvest it, I did so.

I then turned it over to admire it from that angle, only to discover that my beautiful tomato was rotten nearly halfway up. The rot started from the blossom end and was nothing other than blossom end rot, a calcium deficiency that affects tomatoes, watermelons, and a host of others. I was so bummed! But facts are facts, and I was simply out of luck. 

Nutrient deficiencies in plants are very similar to nutrient deficiencies in humans.

If you don't get enough of them, you end up with problems.

Remember, plants need certain nutrients in order to grow healthy and produce fruits. A lack of any of those nutrients will interrupt the process and foil our food growing plans. This is a fairly large topic, so I'll handle it in installments. Let's take them one by one, starting with the majors. In this article, I'll discuss how to diagnose and deal with problems arising from NPK nutrient deficiencies. The next in the series will tackle the secondary nutrients, with the micronutrients handled in the third.