How did your 4 plants do in "Al's mix" before the 2 week rain?
Did you water into the soil or the reservior?
Did you notice if the top of the soil dried out appreciably?
Did your plants wilt at midday?

The plants did better than the ones in the raised bed, most appreciably because the plants in the raised bed all succumbed to fungal disease and the ones in the self waterers, while touched by it, are still living. The ones in the raised beds have no remaining leaves at this point.

They did not wilt at mid day ever that I recall, only my Atlantic Giant pumpkin, also in a self waterer(and doing really well BTW), ever wilted at mid day and only in the hottest of summer. Wilting in mid day with tomatos might be due to climate differences between us. I am in Wisconsin which is pretty far north.

Generally by the time a plant is of any size it has sent roots right down into the reservoir so I don't think it's a problem with water availability as much as it might be the plant simply can't move the water up fast enough even though it's there. Tomatos are some of the wimpiest plants around.

I water both into the soil and reservoir. Mostly into the reservoir, but when I fertilize I do that into the soil. For a normal watering it's just into the reservoir. The top does get dry, bone dry if I water only the reservoir, but the same would occur with a heavier mix.

The earthbox concept of covering the mix with plastic alleviates this for the most part, but really isn't necessary unless you want to use the granular fertilizer on top of the mix in which case the top must have some moisture content.

It's worth noting though that I didn't use Al's mix, I used a variation of it. 1 part turface, 1 park pine bark fines, 1 part peat. Of the 3 ingredients the peat is the fastest wicker which is why I used a bit more.

As this was my first year with both bark fines and turface I took baby steps ;-) I will experiment with something closer to Al's mix next year, but as far as I am concerned the ratio I used this year performed very well for me in self waterers and regular containers.

We were well into the growing season when I found this forum and discovered Al's mix and methods. I had particular problems with two pair of super Marzano's that I had planted in 12x15x12 file crates (two plants per crate) using garden dirt and little peat as soil. They would wilt in the Sun in just a few hours, even when the soil was damp. Watering brought them back in about 15-30 minutes everytime. But EVERY tomato developed BER.

As an experiment I took one pair, carefully split them up, and did bare root transplants into separate office crates using Al's mix (perlite version). One of these crates is top watered, the other is self-watered using 6 rope wicks that come up through the bottom with a water reservoir directly below the crate. These plants were 4-5 feet tall with a big root ball. After a week or so in the shade I brought them out into the sun. No more wilting. No more BER. To be fair, our weather had cooled down a bit and was more humid. But we had a few days of 80's and there was no wilting. In comparison the other pair, still in the garden dirt, wilted every day and still needed midday watering on those 80 degree days; the BER on those plants slowed down, probably due to the weather change, but still more than 35% of new tomatoes are getting BER.

The self-watering crate with Al's mix has supported this large, wilt prone, finicky plant with no need for top watering. Yes, the top did get dry to about 1 inch down on the hot days, but it seemed to recover at night. I imagine if I had the top covered with plastic, Earthboc style, it would do well even in the mid-summer heat.

I also have some young tomato plants that I started from suckers and put into Misco 15" self-watering pots as an experiment. I used Al's mix in one and Justaguy's version of Al's Mix, as defined above, in the other. (I call this Al's Mix - JG Strain) LOL

The JG version seemed to wick a bit better but both mixes seemed to perform well in wicking water to the soil and the plant.

Justaguy, I had a bit different experience with this, than you did. I believe this may have been because, based on your feedback and experience, I thoroughly soaked both mixes before putting them in the pots, so much so that the reservoirs almost filled to the top with the drainage. I then top watered them immediately after planting the new 10" high transplants and once or twice more that week. Since then, they have both received no top watering. The plants are about 3 ft high and have a number of small tomatoes on them.

Hope this info is of use.

Bob - wi-northernlight

Thanks for the responses.

After checking my notes, I realized I used a 3:2:1 ratio of bark:turface:peat. And in California with high 80s average temp, no rain, low humidity.
These probably account for the differences.

Next year, I'll try one pot with the 1:1:1 ratio and see how it goes.

Just for the record, we had unusual weather here for most of July and Augus: mid 90's, very low humidity (45-60%).

wi-northernlight