I can't help you with most of it as yours is a very different approach from the norm but I do see some nitrogen edge burn on some of the leaves, the ones in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd pics. The leaves also appear to be very dark green (may just be color in the photo) but if so that too would indicate excess nitrogen.

I also see some signs of possible leaf edema which often results from inconsistent soil moisture levels - excess followed by dry followed by excess - causes the cells in the leaves to swell and the tissue separates.

I hope this is of some help. You might also post over on the Growing Under Lights forum here where more of the indoor gardeners hang out.

Dave

Thanks for the help Dave! This has given me some good ideas on how to proceed to get them back into good health. Unfortunately I'm stuck growing in an apartment so have to use containers and the grow light. I may try a more common soil mix next time and see how that goes.

Dan

Dan along the lines of what Dave already said, you've focused on nitrogen with the fertilization program and seem to be emphasizing vegetative growth, just by looking at 5-1-1 and additionally cal-mag! That could cause some of the leaf rolling and you didn't mention if the lights are on too continuously which I'd also check. The brown spots you mention, even though the humidity seems nice, I would worry about the lack of air circulation there and would want to check the bottoms of the leaf spots just to see if mold were getting a foothold, as I put a cheap computer fan in there.

About your municipal water tap, I do not know of any municipal water that pH's in the range of 9-10 as you mention above, which would be corrosive and taste bad, so that sounds off to me. Vancover city water is pH 7.5, if you are on their system.

The low level of potassium you have is going to really make the older leaf edema I also see worse, and in addition to too much nitrogen, this further may suggest that you do not have the combination of light/breeze right and those kind of leaves are very suceptible to mold and other disease. Perhaps 14 hours of light is sufficient, the fan, and a light shot of sulphate of potash. As for the irregular watering, no doubt that also contributed to the roll but it sounds like watering is under control now. I have nothing against that sea soil ... it looks pretty interesting. Not sure if it is OMRI yet though since I don't see that stated on your sack.

PC

Thanks for the detailed analysis Pupilla! You were right about it not being OMRI yet. Their original version is which uses peat instead of coco coir. A lot of people around here seem to love them and I have had good results but I'm by no means an evangelist. If you have some organic OMRI soil recommendations or general soil for container recommendations I'm all ears!

I went out and purchased a standing home fan and have that in the door now pushing a slight breeze in the room. I totally neglected that so good catch there.

As for light I I also didn't think about that and likely was giving them too much. I would suspect I was running somewhere around 18 hours of light so have dialed that back.

I went back and checked tap water PH and it appears like it was a problem with my PH Pen calibration. So from now on I'm calibrating right before every feeding. It showed 7.3 today after calibration. Do you think I need to adjust each tap watering down to 6.5 or is a straight 7.0 to 7.5 watering without fertilizer okay?

Could I get your advice on what fertilizer program you would use if your goal is to stay as organic as possible? I was under the impression people start a lot of vegetables with a more nitrogen based program then ramp up more Phosphorus and Potassium more towards flowering? Would you recommend a more balanced program from day 1?

I think the plants are already looking better so thanks a lot for the help! Here are some recent pics but I forgot the LED light on so colour is not so great.

Dan, I've used a few different mixes in containers and I like the sound of your sea soil. The problem with containers is that the system is really too small to set up a true organic soil system in them. People do all sorts of things and may technically get away with it, but I my abilities can't do a completely organic soil and get reliable production, since any "help" and you kid yourself that it is "almost organic". That said, I had some luck with a mixture of 1/3 compost (Black Kow Composted Organic), 1/3 peat & 1/3 perlite in summer but you must watch it doesn't get waterlogged. I know it sounds strange, but raw perlite is "organic". You could put some of those fancy rock dusts in there and dolomitic lime and give it a whirl. Problem is at some point your plants will need the nutrient boost of something like Miracle Gro, which is not organic, but not as bad as some make it out to be, either! There are some Fox Farms hydroponic/organic and Dutch Master hydro organic ones, but these things are really cost intensive and there is no way I could afford to even evaluate them. Tomato-Tone is organic and you can use some of it (the affordable option I would use) but a lot of experimentation is necessary to get it right in a bucket. Those are the tools I would use. There are others that are more expert than I am in this forum on organic methods in a container, but the problem is that ingredients and climates can vary enough that a lot of experimentation is necessary anyway and it is a bit much to ask of a container considering the nutrient demands of a big tomato plant. And a bigger contaner ( say, 25 gallons) can be costly to fill with organic nutrients only. There are other much more economic ways to go if you drop the requirement of deriving all nutrition from "organic" sources, for example pine mulch, etc, is cheap but offers no nutrition so it doesn't get you anywhere nutrient wise, though it might help you save on perlite.

I can't answer whether your tap is appropriate for your plant, even knowing the pH is 7.5. That's because it will be the interaction among the tap, soil ingredients and amendments that determine the pH of the container. For example, if your soil starts on the acid side which it likely will it needs to be neutralized with some lime, but you can do what I do ... put less in and water with alkaline water for a while. Clearly that is not an optimal situation but to be honest my plants do fine despite all the issues with pH, and my tap is pH 7.7. But this is a fragil relationship and the only way to now for sure is to pH test your soil while you grow toget the hang of what's happening, if you are really enthusiastic. Just because it works for me, btw, doesn't mean it will work for everyone. We get lots of rain here and that frequently washes trhough soil mixesand I purposely open the tops wide to encourage that. No residue builds up from the tap or any of my not-organic supplements due to the rain.

The common wisdom of hydroponics of a vegetative and a reproductive period fertilization schemes doesn't seem very pronounced to me when growing the tomato for the long haul. To be perfectly honest, I think all these mantras about vegetative stages and drastic changes during flowering stages are geared towards high value crops LOL. Really with tomato plants you want to keep the nitrogen at a baseline, low in all of my scenarios. You are not growing vines, they get quickly unmanageable for indeterminates and make few tomatoes, and most everyone here seems to agree that being pretty stingy with nitrogen is the way to go. That's the opposite of what you've done. When I grow my tomatoes, my seedlings have only 1/2 to 2/3 the nitrogen the producing plants do, so my nitrogen rate actually increases for me. At the end I back off though because the plants get less productive and unmanageable so there's a lot of give and take.

Hope that helps a little, because nothing is as easy as it seems, so most people find something that works and get pretty stuck to it.

Cheers

PC