Watering Tomatoes

Everybody's toms are being slow this year its too hot!

Mine started early but are only just beginning to really start to go.


You need to water them enough to keep the plants happy. You'll do more harm by overwatering than under watering, if the leaves droop, they need watering. I water mine in growbags a little every day (a whole watering can does 16 plants) but in the ground I don't water them as often but put more on so that the water gets right down.

If you don't water them enough but feed them too much, the tomato feed will get too concentrated in the growbag and the plants won't be able to take up the water and you'll get blossom end rot.

If you water them too much once they are "ripe green", the tomatoes will split as they take up water but the skins are set.

I have 16 plants in large pots. Watered every day. 10 litres does 5 pots. Very weak feed mixed in every day. I see no benefit from feeding strongly once a week, diluted right down, the plants are very happy and have been cropping heavily for best part of a month.

Have about 100 plants in large greenhouse border. They get fed once a week and watered two or three times. They can find there own food and water to an extent so watering and feeding regimes are less critical IMO.

Totty

I've been growing tomatoes for 40 years but to underline an earlier post, ruined about half a dozen plants in pots by over-watering when the weather started to warm up in June. What seemed to happen is that they failed to develop a good root system and the yield on those is very poor with only two trusses per plant

I too grow toms in large plastic pots filled with gro-bag compost. I use pots from the local supermarket that they have cut flowers delivered in. These need puncturing with drainage holes. I place these drainage holes round the sides of the pots some two or three cm up from the base. Thus a reservoir of water accumulates in the bottom of the pot, (where the water seeking roots are), but the higher feeding roots are not waterlogged. Watered everyday; fed with "maxicrop" seaweed extract twice a week. Getting a decent crop of nice toms, (ildi, orange berry, tigerella, shirley and beefsteak). Hope this helps

 Trunky