The dutch buckets have had 66 g KNO3 and 19 oz Grow nutrients per 40 gal reservoir for 1 week today. Less "dying" of tomatoes, some growth returning, and flowers starting to grow tomatoes. The "2 month old tomato" is almost "ripe." They have went through about 5 gallons of water in this week. The peppers, in the same system, have more flowers now, but I think they are continuing to drop despite pollination with a small artist brush, hoping this gets better this week. PH was 6.3, ppm (I hope to get EC soon) was 1250. Today, one week later, pH is 6.2 and ppm is 1340(Not sure what I did there but I also have 2 little helpers to distract me often). Temp is about 76, but did let get to 84 one day last week. Humidity is 65%. Plan to add 1/2 strength nutrients of what I did last week plus water tomorrow night. Would you agree or is this not the right path?

That's not an easy question to answer in a generic way and here is why. The amount of water any plant in any container will need is going to vary highly depending on what kind of soil mix you use, how well the mix holds water or how quickly it dries how, and how often you set the timer to come on. Are you going to water once a day in late May or early June but three times a day in early July? It obviously varies with the weather. You can't put your system on a timer in May or whenever the regular spring rains stop (if they are falling at all) and just leave it there until frost hits. You have to adjust your watering schedule to match the real-life conditions. The way I water in a drought year like 2003 when less than 19" of rain fell is very different from how I water in a better year like 2004 or early 2007 when annual rainfall might be in the high 30s or in the 40s in inches, and different still from how I water in a wet year, like 2009 when 52" of rain fell here and I really only had to irrigate intermittently in July and August. So, I don't really know how to tell you how often to water because I have no knowledge of your soil mix or weather conditions and when setting up any irrigation system, you have to consider not only the soil mix and its ability to hold water (or not), the amount of rainfall you're getting, the temperatures you have but also your humidity. I have to water a lot more often when it is 100+ degrees outside and the humidity is in the teens or the single digits than I do when the temps are in the 100s but the humidity is in the 40s or 50s. I watch my local pan evaporation rate to get an idea of how quickly evaporation is occurring and if you do that long enough and compare it to what you're seeing with your plant, then you know how quickly your soil moisture is evaporating compared to what the pan evaporation rate shows. Containers that are more exposed to high winds dry out more quickly than those that are sheltered from high winds, and those that are exposed to full sun dry out more quickly than those that get a half-day of shade. To set up your system, consider all the variables faced by your plants, and then watch your plants closely. By watching the plants and their color and growth rates, you'll learn how quickly they dry out and that will tell you how long to water and how often to water. It isn't something someone else can tell you because their soil mix might be different from yours and their weather conditions will be different too. Different plants in different places on my property even have different watering needs, even though they're in the same sized containers. Consider plant size too. A large determinate tomato plant that gets 3' or 4' tall and produces tomtoes that are 12 to 16 oz. each in size will use a lot more moisture in a container than a dwarf plant that gets 12-18" tall and produces 1" cherry type tomatoes. You need to zone plants of similar size/water requirements together so you aren't overwatering the smaller plants or underwatering the larger ones. Most pots (unless they are really, really small, will need several emitters per pot. Otherwise, the area near the emitter gets good moisture but areas further away don't. You need an emitter every few inches so all the soil gets wet. The only pots I have that have only one emitter are hanging baskets of flowers on the front porch and I think I get away with only one emitter in them because they are on an east-facing porch and are mostly shaded so they don't dry out quickly. If you have a soil-less mix that holds moisture well and the plants are somewhat sheltered from excessive sunlight, heat and high wind, you only have to water for a few minutes at a time but how many times a day will vary depending on your weather. Hope this helps even though it didn't say something like "water them 3 times a day for 10 minutes at this rate". You'll have to figure that one out for yourself because of all the variables involved. I've linked a website that talks about setting up a drip irrigation system. They have info specific to containers in a paragraph on containers. Some companies, like Dripworks, will work with you to design a layout for your garden. Even they, though, have no way of knowing what your soil-less mix in containers will be like, how quickly it will or won't dry out,etc. so you have to work with your containers, watch them to see how quickly they dry out and learn from them how much they dry out in different conditions and take it from there. Finally, be very careful when selecting or mixing up a soil-less potting mix for containers. Our highly variable weather makes it really hard to know what soil mix to use so at planting time you have to look at that year's regular weather pattern and try to choose the soil mix you want to use based on what you're seeing happen with the weather. The first year I planted a lot in 5-gallon buckets was 2003 (the year we had less than 19" of rain here) and it never, ever rained and I had to water nonstop, having used a general potting soil mix like Miracle Grow potting soil. So, the next year, I used a "Moisture Control" mix thinking it would hold moisture better and I could water less. Guess what happened? In 2004 it rained all the time, (I specifically remember about a foot of rain falling in a 3 week period in late June and early July), my "Moisture Control" soil-less mix stayed much too wet just from rainfall alone, my plants suffered terribly and some of them died. So, the next year, I dumped the Moisture Control soil mix into the veggie garden and mixed it into the ground with all the regular soil. I bet you can guess what happened in 2005? I used a regular soil-less potting mix and we had a drought year with only 23" of rain. My plants would have done better that year with the Moisture Control mix. Nowadays I mix my own soil-less mix and attempt to tailor it to the expected summertime weather conditions, but I don't have ESP so all I'm really doing is guessing. Growing in containers seems like it should be easy, but in our climate, summertime gardening is not easy no matter whether you're growing plants in the ground or in containers. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Setting Up A Drip Irrigation System

Since my last post I went to www.earthbox.com and looked at some of there videos. They had a video of a commercial tomatoe operation that grows in looks like hundreds of earthboxes. They use coir coconut husks as a medium. They use a Florida Weave support system with two plants per box it looks like but they have tremendous looking tomatoes that are uniform in size and with few blems. They pick before they get fully red. Looks like the way to go from a cost basis and sustainability. They are also organic completely. I increased my order to 6 boxes instead of 3 and if goes well will probably start buying a bunch more. I want to get completely away from produce from the food stores with the unrest in world I think we need to be more food self-sufficient.

I just reviewed them and I don't see any that were deleted, the one on varieties should be since it's quite obsolete, and I don't see any major chages in ones that were here before but I do see several that were uploaded by Tamara who is the Moderator here. Tamara, when I list them and indicate that some of yours I feel are incomplete I think it's fair to say that you did try to recruit some folks and I guess no one did, and I certainly didn't b'c I was heavily involved with the addition of all the ones you see that were uploaded by Paul and have the list of user names indicating who helped with each FAQ. And that was a serious and long process that I wouldn't wish on anyone b/c of the need for the inclusion of everyone ( see below). What happened was back in maybe 1999 or 2000 the participants here decided that some new FAQ's should be done. No one volunteered to coordinate, so I did. So first we made a list of the FAQ's we thought needed to be done, then tackled them one by one. We never completed the suggested FAQ's b'c just doing the ones we did took forever. The major problem was that I'm an egalitarian and wanted input from ALL who were GW members at the time and wanted to help which was also the opinion of most here at the time, while there were a few who wanted the FAQ's to be written by one person, with no input from anyone, and almost all of us did not want to do that at all. Even though at some sites someone will do that so all you get is one person's opinion on various FAQ's. With that background I'll just go thru them in order: Det vs indet, that was here when I came BER, ditto Varieties, ditto and should be deleted IMO Blossom Drop, here when I came Prune, here already, I think Tomato Pests, maybe here, can't remember, but belongs in that Forum, not here, IMO Different Leaves, I wrote most and Paul uploaded Cross pollination, we did that and paul uploaded it Start From Seed, we did it, uploaded by Paul Seed Starting II, uploaded by Tamara, new and takes the above to the garden in a somewhat abbreviated manner Upside down, new, uploaded by Tamara Cracking, new, uploaded by Tamara and in my opinion is incomplete b'c there are three kinds of splitting, some genetic, some not Ferts, new, uploaded by Tamara, ditto on incomplete So that's how I see it and again, when I say incomplete I guess it's my own darn fault for not volunteering to generate a list of new FAQ's to be done and then coordinating the writing of them and uploading. But not JUST my fault b'c it's clear that none of the participants who read/post here volunteered so Tamara decided to do it herself. One clarification. Even where I said I wrote most of the leaf one, the final FAQ's that we did here and were uploaded were initially approved, after some serious haggling, LOL, by EVERYONE so that all opinions were taken under consideration in the final form of each uploaded FAQ. Carolyn