When you guys told me to flood it with water, I did this in the morning. I live in the Netherlands and it was pretty hot that day (26-29 degrees celcius), and now its raining all day.

PC got it right. I did it because of the cucumbers.

I really regret doing it though, I wish I've never done it :( The cucumberplants are almost dead.

OK, thanks. I'm always a puzzled when people tell me that they're using some chemical amendment because it's generally "good for plants". Nitrogen is needed by plants. So add that. Boron is needed by plants. So add that. Zirconium is needed by plants. So add that. Water is good for plants, so add a lot more of that. Magnesium is needed for human nutrition, so swallow some epsom salt while you're applying it to the plants.

The reason you should be adding things is because either a soil test or the plant itself tells you it needs it. Did the cukes actually show signs of magnesium deficiency?

I should add that yes, absorption of nutrient through leaves does work ... a little bit. It's called "foliar feeding", and it's mainly used when there is some big problem with the roots, perhaps transplant damage. Leaves are mostly made of cuticle, and cuticle is a really good barrier to absorption of nutrients. The main purpose of cuticle is to keep water inside and, as a result, it keeps most everything else outside. Salts on the leaves will, however, pull water out of the leaves, and can kill them.

I think you guys didn't understand why I watered from above. I know I shouldn't water the leaves, but I had no choice than to water from above. It was easier than watering directly to the roots, and I was a bit tired. I didn't think about that it would damage the leaves. Looking back I know it was a stupid decision, but I've learnt from it.

Next year I'll sell my tomatos at the local market:))

In principle, watering from above is no big deal. That's what happens when it rains. You're not going to stop the rain! Watering epsom salt from above is another thing entirely.

Good luck with your tomatoes!

"Looking back I know it was a stupid decision, but I've learnt from it."

ibraarsla, you are being too hard on yourself to classify it as a stupid thing. Not at all. I do much stupider things all the time :) Like right now, I have about five ten foot (3 meter) vines each on a group of my plants, but each plant only has one poor string to support it tied on an overhead rail. The plants look like a rabid pile of disheveled Lernaean hydras. I was lazy. It's much too hot to spend so much time out there, so there is a giant tomato jungle that looks very ugly.

One general thing when dealing with all fertilizers whether foliar fed or root irrigated. It is always best to start with less, perhaps, half of your plan first, just to be safe because what works for one guy on the internet is not necessarily true for another set of conditions. That's what makes gardening impossible to reduce to the same formula everywhere.

I think/hope your plants will come back fine after the rains and a pause. Please keep us posted here and tell us how things are growing. It's a lot of fun to have a Dutch dirt-garden enthusiast posting now and then!
Cheers
PC

Sure, I'll post an update.

Next week is promised nice weather:)

Sounds great, and we'll look forward to seeing some new shoots soon :)

PC

Calcium onto the leaves, magnesium in the soil. I have found success by putting about a teaspoon of Epsom salts at the base of the plant and then water it in. I hope your 'maters survive.

I dont have much experience with gardening but im guessing the epsom salt you got on the leaves dried them up. I bet they will return to normal.

Just water a ton

A update after 1.5 weeks.

The tomatoplants have recovered! That's really nice to see:

Can't say that for all of them unfortunately

As you can see, the tomatoplants have grown quite alot.

I've bought a rope to help them grow straight.

But will this hurt the tomatoplant?

I'm binding it with this:

Welcome back ibraarsla!

Those cucumbers look great to me and I'm so happy to see your tomatoes are getting back in business after the little problem last time!

The plasticized twine (string, rope) looks like a good one to me and is very similar to the one I use in both thickness and composition (w/polypropylene plastic). Occasionally the twine can damage the plant if it is tied too tightly, or if wind causes a problem. Just keep the loops 2-3 cm in diameter whenever you can tie them that way. I don't tie string directly to my plants, I made the effort to import from the experts in Holland :) some vine Bato vine clips which are easier to use but not essential. They make an easier connection if you have many string up plants and you don't have to adjust the string until the plant reaches the top.

Those are great plants! Thanks for the great set of pictures. I think I may have to grow some "komkommer" now after admiring these! What else to do with thousands of Dutch clips :-) More tomatoes! It would be interesting to know what tomato varieties have you planted. Do you know the names of your varieties?

Cheers!
PC

Haha sorry, I forgot their names.

I've bought them Lidl, a supermarket in my town.

I'm not sure but it might be one of those: http://www.thompson-morgan.com/vegetables/vegetable-seeds/tomato-seeds

F1 hybrid sounds very familiar.

Thanks for your help man:)

Hallo again...Pity that you forgot the names!
What if one grows very successfully or is so great tasting and you want to replant it again? The F1 hybrids are numerous varieties (maybe 1000). Many of those are dependable/reliable year after year, but many of us in the forum save the seeds from the tomatoes we grow. Seed saving cannot be done reliably with the F1 hybrids, so you must buy new seed or plants the next year subject to what is being sold. Many home gardeners like the convenience of saving seeds. The seeds you can save are not labeled as F1 hybrids, but may be labeled as OP (open pollinated). It they are not labeled F1 or OP, usually they are OP by default. Both types of tomatoes are good but if you have challenging growing conditions, sometimes the reliability of the F1 hybrids really is necessary. I grow both types.

Did you grow from seeds or buy the small plants at Lidl? If you can try to grow from seeds, these guys sell some nice F1 and OP in the Netherlands economically for a small gardener, if your local selection is small:

123 Zaden - Zeeland (some good OP's)
Van der Wal - Drenthe (some good F1 hybrids)

I hope this could help you get even more excited for tomatoes! Some excellent tomato hybrids are bred in the Netherlands. It must be great to live in a place with so much growing!

Cheers!
PC

tomato is such a forgiving plant to grow and once you "fix" things they respond very quickly. i remember planting a cutting that had many yellow dieing leaves.. in less than 2 weeks the plant doubled in size and you could never tell the plant was ever practically almost dead.

one word of advice in the future for the case of growing plants: less is more.
epson salt is great to use if you want a quick mag/sulfur boost, but IMO anything over 1 tsp per gal is over kill. use one tsp per gallon and apply more often..i would say every 2 weeks is good with plenty of watering in between.

another option would be to sprinkle about 1 tablespoon of dry epson salt around the plants, that way it will slow-release each time you water. you could do this once a month..

As I kid, always was excited about growing my old plants. And now it's my hobby.

I grew them from seeds somewhere in March. All of them germinated (I don't know the proper word to use).

Could you take a picture of your garden? Or maybe PM me.

As I said, if you want a quick mag/sulfur boost, you really ought to have a good reason for wanting it. No sense in doing that boost without a soil test that calls for it, or without any visible signs of deficiencies. There is no magic sauce and incantation for growing tomatoes. Kind of funny how people look at epsom salt that way.

"All of them germinated (I don't know the proper word to use)."
That's exactly the word to use! That's great how you enjoy the plants. What part of the Netherlands are you gardening at? Some years I spent times visiting Naaldwijk (near Den Haag). I worked on some tomatoes and my sweet peppers project, but all I remember is eating eels, cheese, crackers, other fish and cold cuts, and mini cucumbers and cherry tomatoes for breakfast, and very good bread ... and then looking through the Dutch germplasm for interesting varieties. That place was so interesting ;-)

Tomorrow, if it is a nice day, I can post again with a picture of the one of my plants on the string support if that is what you'd like to see, but don't expect something great, because I got lazy and did not maintain them properly. The season is finished and I have been sick for a week so the vines really have been neglected and are crazy out of control. I don't know why I killed myself going out in the heat to keep watering them all but it is hard to say "the end" after all the work and our very short season before the heat. A few tomatoes are still on the plants, and I like to look at them ;-)
Cheers
PC

OK, I didn't forget (but maybe you did LOL - how are the plants looking this week?) As promised, here are three pictures of one of my three places I have tomatoes growing, which I call my tomato house. It is just a plastic-covered hoop. Everything is messed up because it is time to take it all down and clean up when I get the courage to do that:

Tomato house with Lernaean Hydra plants three meters high and having several stems (soon I will take the sword to them).

An example of the tomato clips and normal thin string I use in there:

One extra string I added on one end which is much thicker than normal because I just happened to have it in my hand at the moment. I put this picture because it illustrates a little more creatively and better the use of the clips.

Cheers!
PC

Nice setup PC

Wow your tomato plants are huge!

Where are you from?

I live in Helmond (near eindhoven), it's in the same province as Den Haag. It's going to be 33 degrees celcius next week.

Mine have grown quite a lot too:)

I'm not sure what I should do with those 2 though, they'll produce flowers too:

What did you do to recover ? I have my newly transplanted tomatoes in a large pot, I noticed some aphids in the soil so I called my local nursery and they told me to spray a little soap on them they've only been in the large pots for about a week or so but after spraying them with the diluted soap mixture A few tomatoe plants are most defiantly wilting and just will not perk up!!!! I got rid of the aphids but now I have wilting Roma tomatoe plants I tried flushing the soil I rinsed of the leaves I even sprayed a diluted milk mixture on them, I'm hopless,,, anyway will the wilting plant effect the good plant since there in the same large pot? And please tell me what I should do to help them recover

Hey Eva,

I did almost nothing, except for the usual. Just keep watering them, and give them much love :). I only flushed the soil once.

Luckily, tomato plants are very forgiving, they recover quickly.

Hope this helps, good luck ;)

Could you post a picture? I'm curious how your plant looks now.

Thank you for replying back I tried really hard to do everything right , they only been in the large pots for a 2 weeks they just look so sad

When do you plant to transplant all those into separate pots? The longer you put it off the less likely they will tolerate the move.

Dave

Hi digdirt2 , or Dave rather lol I'm new to this process They are in 35 gallon containers I Don't plan to move them in seprate pots, when I asked the guy at the nursery he said that I was able to plant 3 up to for tomatoes in each container I will post a picture of the container itself so you could see how large it is

The guy said he preferred I only plant 2 in each pot but I already purchased all the tomatoes and I really couldn't afford to buy any more pots Or soil, so I planted them together cause I didn't no what els to do with the extra plants, and I can't plant in the ground because I'm moving in a few weeks and I plan to bring my tomatoes with me

I figured each tomato plant can grow in a 5 gallon container so I've read on all these gardening websites , so if I had a 35 gallon container i had plenty enough room , right ? 5x4= 20 so I figured 35 gallons to 3 or 4 plants would be fine ? No?

"I figured each tomato plant can grow in a 5 gallon container so I've read on all these gardening websites "

Uhhh, no. You must have missed all the discussions about using 10 gallons minimum and those recommending even larger ones for best results. 5 gallons is the MINIMUM for survival.

See it all depends on the variety of the tomato plant. You can grow a dwarf or some of the determinate varieties in 5 gallons. You can even grow 2 determinate varieties in 10 gallons if the container is self-watering. Indeterminate varieties may survive for awhile in 5 gallons and produce a few tomatoes but not without a lot extra care and work from you. It is far from ideal.

I don't know what varieties you have planted there but you are in for some serious problems with that over-crowding. The nursery guy was right - 2 plants will do ok in 35 gallons but it looks like you have 4 or 5 in there. They will do much better if you sacrifice those extra plants now.

Dave

RIP my inbox.

Your tomato plant looks nice Eva, don't worry.

But digdirt2 is right. You should sacrifice some, i know that will be a hard thing to do though.

Maybe you can give it to your neighbors, family, friends.

Ok so that's the only advice ? Dig out some ? Ok I can do that ,,, do you think that's the problem for the wilt and yellow leaves doe ?

They don't look very big right now. Do you have silver foil on top? If so, you might do better with a mulch of bark chips or grass clippings or something else organic.

Yellow leaves could indicate a need for some fertilizer.

Linda

Btw Dave there wasn't 5 in each some had 3 one had four, ok fine each plant needs ten gallons , 3x10= 30 ,,, + 5 more gallons to spear on the ones I only did three in...early girls & super Roma's I also did beef steak but I just took out 1 and that leaves 2 in one pot

I'm more concerned that I might have used the wrong soil, I did two parts organic topsoil one part, cow munure and one part miracle grow & added some gypsum and powdered egg shells in potting whole

Yup labadors foil is on top cause I noticed amongst all my other problems some signs of lik amongst all my other problems some signs yellow leaves blight, I read everywhere foil is best thing to keep aphids away and reduce splashing ,

Sorry Eva but your question got lost in all the other discussion. In the future it is best to start your own thread, ok?

I don't know what the foil is supposed to do but it could be making the soil too warm. It can also abrade the stems.

Wilting can be caused by many things - over or under watering, over-crowding, transplant shock, the potting mix you used, or even by all the things you have sprayed on them. What are the containers filled with? One problem is obvious, the size of the plants right now compared to the size of the container means they could easily be drowning if you are actually keeping 35 gallons of soil wet all the time. With a container that big what is usually done is to fill it only 1/2 full, plant the small transplant and then slowly fill the container with mix as the plant grows. That keeps the scale of plant to amount of soil in line.

Could your tell us the actual dimensions on the container? Are you guessing at the 35 gallons or is that what the nursery claimed? The reason I ask is that 35 gallons is a very unusual size for containers sold to the public. In all my years in the nursery business I have never seen a container that shape that will actually hold that much mix. Standard sizes for hard sided containers is 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 50.

Your plants are quite leggy, with long skinny stems and long spaces between the branches. That means they are not getting nearly enough sun. Plus are you sure they were aphids? It would be unusual to see aphids in soil. More likely fungus gnats. Either way I'd suggest laying off on all the sprays. Those home-made remedies usually only make things worse.

Based on your photos I can only tell you what I would do. Reduce the plants to no more than two in each container, dig up the two you choose to leave and bury them much deeper so all that bare stem is buried, bury them right up to just below the top cluster of leaves so new roots will develop all along that buried stem. Then feed them with a well balanced fertilizer, preferably a liquid one so it will work quickly and move the containers to where they can get much more sun.

Next year, if you plan use those same containers, first take the time to do some research into large container growing. It has some very unique requirements.

I hope this is of some help to you.

Dave

Those things you listed might work in the ground but do not work well in pots. Growing in pots is really different than growing in the ground. But, as you say, you're out of money so you'll have to work with it. Next year, try to save up and buy either potting soil or potting mix. Notice the "potting" in the description. That's what you want.

This may sound stupid, but did you make multiple holes in the bottoms of the pots? I ask because I bought a couple of those exact type a year or two ago and noticed when I got them home that they didn't come with drainage holes punched out. That would make a big difference...

I hope there are drainage holes...

Why these makers make growing pots with no drainage holes is beyond me.

It was one of those things where they had marked them out in a circle on the bottom of the pot but hadn't actually drilled or punched them through. It was mildly annoying because I only noticed after I had filled the first one with dirt and Meyer lemon tree.

"Why these makers make growing pots with no drainage holes is beyond me."

In part it is because nurseries are now selling the conversion kits that let you turn them into self-watering planters or pots. So they give you the option of holes or no holes in the pot itself.

EX: self-watering-pot-reservoir

And many also like to use the double-pot, or pot-within-a-pot solution too (inside one with holes but outside one without holes) on decking to prevent water stains or for extra insulating value.

Dave

aniajs Yes I sure did, (drill holes) it was easy and I didn't mind ...

Hey Dave sorry to cramp your style, and start asking questions on your page, like I said I'm new to this ok? And to be quite honest your advice is quite contradicting first the pots are too small now there too big so yeah I will take this somewhere els thank you for your advice I think, and yea there 35 gallon

Sorry but I think you misunderstood what I said. You aren't "cramping my style" as it was ibraarsla post not mine. My point was that often when anyone tacs on to someone else's post with a new question their question gets lost in the discussion with the original poster. You asked for more information and I apologized for over-looking your question.

As to conflicting information, I'm sorry if I was unclear but we are talking about 2 different stages of plant growth. Small young plants in a great big container vs. full grown plants over-crowded in that same container. Totally different situations.

I can understand how info can get over-whelming when one is new to the whole process and when that happens just ask for clarification. Turning defensive or hostile doesn't help you get the info you need or want. So I'll just refer you to the Container Gardening forum here for all the details on how to grow tomato plants in containers.

Good luck with your plants.

Dave

Hey no problem Dave I'm sorry if I came out looking hostil it was not my intention, I did in deed start a new question but no one answered Anyway just came back from the nursery and the gardener told me to use vermiculite To help loosen the soil , she said the amount of tomatoes I had wasn't bad in each container because It was large , she insured me that it would be fine cause they had large trees growing in 20 gallon containers, I showed her some of my soil and she said it was way too rich and dence and packed to tight not giving a chance for the roots to spread , so hopefully the vermiculite works thanks for all your guys help.. Sorry for cramping anyone's style lol

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/3946208/droop-plants

Link to Eve Angelica's post. It was hiding in the Tomato Pests & Diseases Forum.

Rodney