Paul M. Cook wrote:
FarmI wrote:
....
I tried to warn you about inconsistent watering in June when you
complained about BER and you didn't believe me then. Rather than
take up orchids, give up on pots and put the toms in the ground. Even
if you have to do a lot or work to prepare the soil, it'll make
you life easier in the end.

And as I've repeated

1) can't plant in the ground - not enough of it - my backyard is 95%
patio 2) pots work great for everything else - you should see the
cukes and zukes I got - hugely successful
3) I put all pots on automatic watering way back then and the moisture
meters read perfect ever since
4) I can't do better than perfect

the meters might be in the wrong places or
could not be calibrated correctly. did you
dig down and check the containers and see
if there were some spots that weren't getting
the right amount of moisture. sometimes things
compact or cavitate or layer or crust in such a
way that water is not being consistently located
in the medium...

and really, the meter is going by soil moisture
content, but that does not address the fact that
on different days the plants may need more or
less moisture due to humidity and temperature
and that will not have much to do with soil
water content directly, but indirectly and as you've
found automatic one factor systems are not
going to address complete system variances...


I don't know how much more consistent my watering could possibly have
been.

it's not just watering, but temperature, humidity and
soil structure.


But if some split tomatoes are the price to pay I guess I'll
stick to pots. They do taste just fine. My yellow pears could not
have done any better with the setup I have. I may just stick to
smaller tomatoes since they seem less fussy to grow.

cherry tomatoes... we have so many and they were a
few weeks earlier. just too hard to make a sandwich from
them and they are a bugger to can.


songbird