Near harvest I myself like to stress the plant, make it think it's going to die. That way it puts everything in the fruit. Works well. I limit water, and nutrients. But hey that's me! Amazing cool with stone fruits, you can boost brix by 5 points or more. With indeterminate tomatoes I really do not do it. But it seems like a good idea with determinates. With indeterminates I usually lower nitrogen once fruit is formed. At times I may boost it like with cherry tomatoes that really run nutrients through. Often producing hundreds of tomatoes on one plant. It needs to be fed. Fruits usually do not form during very hot weather so it's a good time for nitrogen. When conditions are right for fruit formation, I do limit feedings. Dry farming is a science, and these techniques are based on dry farming practices.

i agree with you, marcinde. The best fix is to actually fix, not camouflage. It's reminding me of the typical screening for utilities, where one creates a hedge monstrosity in order to cover up a little pipe or something coming out of the ground. After the utility object is out of sight, the screening itself frequently becomes the eyesore. The pier here is not going to get smaller by placing a planter -- even a wide one -- on top of it. Few are going to be swayed that it's a genuine improvement. It's likely that the impediment to fixing is fear of high cost. Because this is not a complicated procedure requiring an unusually high skill level, I'd place an ad on Craigslist Gigs, with a picture, explaining what is wanted, in detail, and at least get prices. There might be someone with sufficient masonry skills available who could do it efficiently at a very reasonable cost. As an example, last year I had cause to have a small area of colored concrete demolished and removed (it was part of a slab in which a bad batch of mix was used.) My ad on craigs was answered in minutes. The next morning an intelligent, skilled (and likable) guy (who brought a helper) showed up with his jack hammer and solved my problem for $50! (He was a tile flooring installer.) I could not have rented a jack hammer and done the work myself for less. Of course, a person needs to prequalify a prospective sub by asking a few questions regarding details about how they will proceed with the job in order to get a feel if they are the right person. Anyway, I've had good luck several times and no back luck yet. I can't tell if there is anything inside the piers that will complicate this job, but from outward appearances, the bulk of the work looks like careful demolition and only a little reconstruction. With the proper tools, it wouldn't be too difficult or too time consuming.

The simplest way to calculate that is you take for 1' of height =1" of diameter so if you have a height of 6' it would be a 6" round or square column.

The width of a column should be an proportion to it's height, here are examples. As an example, the Doric column is 1/8 height. A column is not straight, it starts at the ratio, increases at about 1/3 of it's height and then tapers again to it's ratio. The other element you might think about is that this porch does not include an entablature.