Yes, too much water will make the leaves yellow. This is also the time of year that the older leaves on the bottom yellow & drop because they are shaded by all the leaves above. & I think they concentrate on flowers instead of leaves too. Photo? Linda

I am sure there is a 'perfect' frequency at which to water each individual plant... but I have many dozens of plants in pots (well over 300) so I don't have the luxury of time to feel each one's soil. However I do find that most succulents are incredibly forgiving (obvious exceptions) and seem to do well no matter how often a feel like watering. I am off two days a week, so I water 2 days a week... but sometimes, particularly in the long summer days, I have opportunities to water more often so I do... sometimes every day to every other day. So far, with the few exceptions I did not specify above, 99% of my plants do great with whatever they get. Exceptions in the past have been plants in too much shade, or the super touchy things like Mesembs and caudiciforms. Those have to be set aside and watched a bit more closely. Thankfully, of the about 50 species of cacti I have in pots, none seem to care if they get watered once a day or once a month (some I neglect for months on end). I just notice that sometimes the ones getting more water flower more and grow faster. That's about it. I have had cacti sitting out of a pot for over a year (no soil, no water) and they still look fine (these are columnars or barrels... not small mammillarias). So with most plants, I think you can pick your own schedule and go with it... in most cases, as long as the soil drains well, they will manage. Just be sure you water watering them thoroughly when you do, especially if there is peat in the soil... peat soils often never get wet at all if you dont' water thoroughly and the plants do die of dehydration. Of course all this is from someone living in a dry climate (southern California) that is fairly warm year round. Those growing stuff in humid climates might have to be a bit more careful I suppose.

Susan, No, Tomato Tone is not sufficient to prevent BER because BER is not purely a nutritional deficiency issue although that perception exists. Blossom End Rot is more of a physiological condition. BER can be linked to a certain extent to a calcium deficiency in the plant, but not specifically to a calcium deficiency in the soil. The actual cause of BER has more to to with uneven watering at specific points in the plants' growth cycle. The best way to prevent BER is to keep the soil evenly moist at all times and to avoid letting the soil go through wild swings from too dry to too wet. Some other stresses also can contribute to BER, including overfertilizing. When your plant experiences certain stresses at certain points its growth cycle, the plant actually suffers a calcium deficiency within the plant itself and this can cause the calcium to physically leave the fruit and goes back into the main part of the tomato plant to compensate, and then the lack of calcium in the fruit allows the BER to develop. BER normally shows up as the darkened, leathery spot at the blossom end of the fruit and it can cause accelerated ripening. (More rarely, it shows up as a black spot on the inside of the fruit even though the fruit appears normal on the inside. This is known as the internal form of blossom end rot. I have seen it in one of my fruit exactly once in my life.) So, BER can occur even with adequate calcium in the soil because dry roots aren't pulling enough calcium out of the soil, so to speak, and that sets off the chain of events leading to BER. In addition to extreme moisture fluctuations and overfertilizing, BER also can be related to cool, humid weather, compacted soil and excess amounts of either potassium or ammonia in the soil or soil-less potting mix. BER is more common on certain varieties than others and it is more common on soil with a less than ideal pH (either too high or too low). You tend to see it most often early in the season when the tomato plants' vascular systems are still immature and find it hard to cope with the stresses to which they're exposed, which also can include high drying winds. Many years ago it was simply believed the entire cause was a calcium deficiency in the soil, but more recent research shows it to be the more complicated scenario I described above. Some people buy a calcium spray that is supposed to prevent BER but it does not work because calcium cannot be absorbed through the skin of the tomato. Even if you have BER early in the growing season, it tends to go away on its own as the plants grow and become larger and better able to withstand stresses of all types. As far as overfeeding, I find it incredibly hard to overfeed if you use only organic fertilizers because they release slowly and are absorbed slowly. It can be very easy to overfertilize with chemical fertilizers and I avoid them about 95% of the time for that reason. I doubt Espoma considers that people using soil-less potting mixes with pelleted fertilizer are also using their fertilizers. Their focus is, and always has been, on making the best organic fertilizers possible to provide the correct nutrition to plants. They also produce organic soil-less potting mixes and I'm sure they'd prefer we all use them. Whenever any one of us combines more than one fertilizer product with another, especially when they involve chemical or synthetic ferts, we are playing with fire because combining them can lead to levels of some nutrients that are too high. As far as Supersweet 100, it doesn't crack any more or less than many other cherry types. I prefer Sweet Million because I haven't noticed as much cracking with it. Some of the non-cracking cherries have skin so tough that I won't grow them, and if I do grow them, they are only for dehydrating and not for fresh eating since dehydrating makes the skin tough anyway. Lots of cherry types crack and, once again, I think providing evenly moist soil helps prevent it. That's a lot easier to do with container plants that are not necessarily exposed to heavy rainfall since you can move them to a sheltered location out of the rain. Too much moisture causes cracking in tomatoes of all shapes and sizes because it can make the internal portions of the tomatoes grow faster than the skin so the skin has to crack...it can't help itself. I wouldn't put two indeterminates in one 25-gallon pot. For me, both Jet Star and Supersweet 100 routinely top 6' to 8' in the garden soil or if in a large enough (20-25 gallon) container. They also can be 3' to 4' across, so putting two of them in one container, even a large container, is not something I'd do because they will be very cramped and crowded and the crowded foliage can become diseased very easily due to a lack of air flow. Please do not hesitate to ask questions. None of us mind answering them, and you never know when the question you ask will help someone else who is too reserved to ask questions. Lots of folks lurk here and only read and never ask questions, so your questions/our answers may help them too. (Hey, you lurkers, y'all should join the forum and talk to us....it is free...and we are nice 99.9% of the time so---what are you waiting for????) Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: If You Haven't Seen Espoma's Mixes, Here They Are

I've grown Black Cherry for the last two years. Last year we had a cold wet spring, then went immediately to very hot days. Black Cherry was the only tomato that really had any production. Of the other 20+ varieties (I had cut back because I had surgery in the spring), we got maybe two dozen tomatoes all summer, but the Black Cherry kept on pumping them out. Unfortunately, this year has been even worse, weather wise. May was cold and wet, temps as much as 10-12 degrees below normal in the weeks before plant out time, June ran 10-15 degrees above normal almost from the get go. So far in July we have had only 4 days below 90, 3 that were 90-94, 14 days from 95 to 99 and 6 over 100 degrees! Black Cherry is the only tomato to give us ripe fruit yet and the other 30 varieties have very few tomatoes set on them. And no, I haven't over done it on the nitrogen. I think we've just had too much hot weather (and the humidity has been higher than normal too) for most pollen to be viable. BC has so many blossoms that some of them set in spite of the conditions. Their flavor has been quite good all along, not great maybe, but definitely better than the stuff you find in the grocery stores. Betsy