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vkelman

What's wrong with our container tomatoes?

https://picasaweb.google.com/101919728428437233122/SomethingWrongWithOurTomatoes?authuser=0amp;feat=directlink

We're growing tomatoes for a first time in two Earth Box http://earthbox.com/index.php/ and one Grow Box http://www.agardenpatch.com/ containers. We bought some regular hybrid tomato plants at local Home Depot. And while we got tomatoes, we also got problems - on some plants leaves and branches become dry but green on some plants, on other plants they become yellow first and then dry. You can see it on these pictures.

My wife thought there might be some fungal infection so I tried to apply Safer Brand Garden Fungicide http://goo.gl/95mA0e and Garden Safe 24-Ounce Fungicide3 Insecticide/Fungicide/Miticide http://goo.gl/ylfm9z (as well as Safer Brand Tomato and Vegetable Insect Killer http://goo.gl/Gz46yv) for several times. Could it really cause problems instead of solving them? I don't think so, I think they started to become dry before I did anything.

I also thought maybe tomato plants suck all the nutrients out of boxes. Earth Box comes with its own organic soil mix, dolomite, and fertilizers; Grow Box comes with dolomite and fertilizers, we bough Garden Soil for it at the local Home Depot. So, I searched on Amazon and bought some Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed (Kelp Extract) http://goo.gl/Gy8vBI and Azomite - Organic Trace Mineral Soil Additive Fertilizer http://goo.gl/ov9cL2. Earth Box and Garden Patch containers are not designed to easy apply additional fertilizers, I tried to put them into a water which goes to the bottom of boxes and put some Azomite on the top. Could it hurt? I don't know, but it didn't help.

Out plants probably aren't getting enough sun (we're too close to the forest which brings shadows) but I don't think it's what causing this.

I never forgot to add water, as you know it goes to the bottom of those containers first. When I opened top cover of boxes I noticed that there are a lot of roots on the surface of the ground. So, maybe there is just not enough soil in those boxes to feed two (undetermined) plants in each?

Again, tomatoes are still growing and become ripe, but more and more leaves and branches are getting dry. It's just beginning of the August, I was expecting normal life cycle of our tomatoes until at least October...

#fertilizer #earthbox #growbox #gardenpatch #homegardening #tomatoes

Here is a link that might be useful: Pictures of our troubled tomato plants

This post was edited by vkelman on Thu, Aug 1, 13 at 21:51

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