What's going on with our tomatoes

Hi there
We have just taken out our tomatoes; 100s and 1000s and Red Pear. All plants were watered the same and given a tomato feed 3 times a week but some of the compost from the plant pots was dry and some wet. Do the different varieties need different feeding/watering? What could account for this difference? By the way, all plants did not do very well this season.
Thanks  :blink:

My toms are still going really well and I harvested loads yesterday    The Roma seem to be really going for it and they are large, juicy and red. I'm chuffed with them, especially as the seeds were a freebie with a mag

If you fed the plants full strength feed three times a week, the chances are you overfed them. What happens then is that the salts build up in the compost and the plant can't take up water so the feed isn't doing any good.

If you only watered them when you fed them, then again the plant would be less likely to take up the feed because there would be too many salts in the water.

If the compost was wet, then the plants were possibly waterlogged which again stops the roots breathing and the plants suffer.

Sounds a bit like you gave the plants too much TLC. Tomatoes are harmed more by overwatering than under watering. I feed mine about once a week with half strength tomorite, and water them every other day but modify that depending on the weather and the size of the plant (every day for big plants in hot weather, every third day for small plants and/or dull weather).

Some people even recommend that you only water tomatoes when the leaves start to droop but I think that is putting the plant under stress and is likely to give you blossom end rot.

I saw that episode and I thought that he'd said it was very dilute feed and I also thought that he didn't water them very much so I suppose the overall effect was the same as feeding them once a week/fortnight and watering in between.

I came away with the impression that what he was doing was more akin to hydroponic culture with little or no soil/compost and all the goodness in the water.

Diluting it makes all the difference