GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

29-05-2006, 04:37 PM posted to rec.gardens

In article says...
You will likely have to water them daily (it depends on how big your
containers are and what type of potting mixture you used). The drip
systems work fairly well, but again, it depends on the potting mixture
you used.

Last year with the drought I had to water them every day and sometimes
that wasn't even enough. My container tomatoes never did well. Last
year they grew funny and I had lots of BER and cracking and the time
before that the fruit looked deformed although very edible. This year
I'm using a highly arable draining potting soil. As an experiment I
mixed slow release fertilizer in half the containers and used mushroom
compost as nutrients in the other half so we'll see.

Another big problem with containers (as far as I've read) is heat. If
the roots get over 90 degrees they start dieing and containers can be
very vulnerable to getting hot in the summer. I'm installing some
system to at least shade the pots from the sun so they don't heat up so
much. I think that could have been part of my problems with container
tomatoes last year too.

So far tomatoes in containers have been my biggest challenge and failure
over the past years. Although I always got enough tomatoes to eat and
occasionally give away I didn't get the full potential from the plants.