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Name: Stormy Valley Forge Pa I Love MAM ~ So Happy Together
Bit, Do you belong to Tomatoville? It's a free site and has a great forum for heirlooms. The most authoritative poster and heirloom tomato book author Carolyn Male, is a very frequent poster there as well as on DG. She is the most wonderfully helpful person.
Name: Sally central Maryland slef employed writier
Hey gals-
I now know of three examples of tomatos in a pot doing very poorly. Anything come to mind- why tomatos would suffer greatly when flowers can be grown in a pot?
Wide open question I know...
"If you bring joy and enthusiasm to everything you do, people will think you're crazy" W. Haelfeli, New Yorker cartoon
My biggest problem with growing any food crop in containers is water/heat stress. Here it gets so hot in the summer that a container, even a fairly large one, will almost certainly dry out every day. Even with daily watering, that cycle of wet-dry-wet-dry is really hard on the plant. And it can't put its roots down to where the water is constant like a plant in the ground can.
Right now I'm growing some tomatoes in containers in a shady area - they are right under a mature pine tree, so the light they get is dappled and filtered. I also made sure they had plenty of root space, just one plant per 18 gallon tub. They don't wilt every afternoon like the container tomatoes I've grown in the past, but they may start to as the plants get bigger - more leaf area means more water loss every day.
Name: Sally central Maryland slef employed writier
THanks bit, that does sound likely. 18 gal sounds like BIG. My aunts I saw on tuesday must have been 3 gal at the most.
I think we often fail to understand what a huge effort it is for a plant to make fruit.
"If you bring joy and enthusiasm to everything you do, people will think you're crazy" W. Haelfeli, New Yorker cartoon
Yeah, I should've mentioned that my container tomatoes haven't ripened any fruit yet, but are all at the flower or tiny green fruit stage. They got a late start on the season after I had disease problems with my main tomato crop. Gardening is always an experiment for me...
Name: Stormy Valley Forge Pa I Love MAM ~ So Happy Together
I actually have ripe tomatoes in my pots that I have to pick today. A few of my tomatoes right now should be moved into larger pots. I've already picked a few ripe ones. It is very important to water them extremely well and on very hot days, to water them twice daily.
People in the south sit the pots in deep trays. I read of one gal who keeps all of her potted tomatoes in those large aluminum turkey roasting pans. They put a couple of short lengths of rope from the pot to the water in the pans to act as wicks so that the plants never really get the chance to dry out.
This is where that bucket gardening is really such a good idea. it's the same principle, never letting the plants get stressed.
What are everyone's favorite tomato sauce-like recipes? My paste tomatoes are coming in full-swing now, so I need to get cooking. I made a good one with lots of herbs and eggplant the other day, but I'm always looking to branch out.
Also, is there anything I can add to a tomato sauce to make it less acid? My husband loves the stuff, but it bothers his stomach to eat too much. I try to always mix low-acid veggies in with the tomatoes, but that only goes so far.
BER is caused by insufficient calcium getting to the fruits. If your soil is deficient in calcium, adding it (crushed eggshells work well, I've heard) will fix the problem. But it can also be caused by temperature or water fluctuations keeping the plant from taking up the calcium effectively, in which case adding more won't help, you need to address whatever else is stressing the plant.
Usually I just pull off the fruits as soon as I notice BER so the plant will put its energy into other, healthier fruits. It tends to go away on its own for me, but I know my soil isn't calcium-deprived.
Yeah, I wouldn't want to add a lot of sugar either. Kinda goes against my better judgment of wanting to eat healthier garden-fresh foods. I wonder if there's some sugar-rich fruits/veggies I could add that would have a similar effect without affecting the taste too much...
Name: Stormy Valley Forge Pa I Love MAM ~ So Happy Together
Some people say just a tablespoon or two will do the trick, but I'm a real purist when it comes to tomato sauce.
Bit, Yes I think the BER is due to water stress and feel very lucky that only 1 plant has it. It's been so darned dry here. I need to put a pan under that pot.
Well, even after making sauce (froze nearly a gallon of it) and salsa, I still had tomatoes to spare. So here was last night's project:
I tried to get a good one of the three colors, but the light in my kitchen is awful...
I'm amazed at the turnaround these plants made after being so sickly all spring. This is the first time I've been overrun with tomatoes and I'm quite happy about it
