Hi folks I bought two tomato plants from costco this year. I've never grown tomatos before. The tags said "small sweet fruit", and that's about all I know. They are outside against a East facing wall, and get direct sun until between 12 and 1. They are making lots of little tomatos which is exciting, but the plants themselves look sickly. Lots of yellow leaves, and plants just don't look like they're thriving. I try to only water them when they're dry (every couple of days), but also don't want them to dry out during hot hot summer days. Do they need nutrients or am I over/under watering them?? Ideas? *correction* they are on an East wall :)
They do look like they are too wet, despite being in little black pots on a south wall. And may also need to be fertilized. If you move them up to bigger containers it will become possible to get bigger plants with more fruit - and may make it easier to manage the watering. Especially if they are actually getting too dry.
The plants do look somewhat nutrient starved. If the plants have not been fertilised they will need nutrients. An NPK ratio of 2-1-3 is about best for tomatoes at the fruiting stage; might be expressed as 10-5-15, or whatever, depending on how concentrated it is. Most tomato specific ferts also have a relatively high magnesium content If growing indeterminate tomatoes in this size of pot it is better to prune them to 1 or 2 stems and eliminate all other side shoots when they are still small. Unpruned tomato plants really need larger containers, as suggested by Ron above. It is obviously too late now for a normal pruning regime but it would be a good idea to remove some of the branches that have no flowers, or maybe even some of the ones that have flowers but no fruit yet if there are a lot of them. Each new branch will not begin to flower until after five leaves have formed, but after that time new flowering parts will occur after every three leaf nodes; simple maths will tell that fewer stems equals a higher fruit to foliage ratio. About six weeks before your normal first frost it is a good time to cut off all stems 2 or 3 leaf nodes above the last fruit, remove all side-shoots, and discard all new flowers as they will not have time to form fruit. Doing this will give the existing fruit the best chance of reaching maturity. When the first proper frost is predicted pick all the remaining green tomatoes and let them ripen in the kitchen at room temperature. Hope that helps.
