Thanks, Muddy. Very helpful. I like the fact that you are not putting in so much fertilizer. I think that may be an important factor to decent growth and yield. I get the distinct feeling that many use too much fert.
I did an experiment on July 1st, 2015. After having a terrible growth experience from putting too much fertilizer in the planter box and in the ground grown tomato plants where I got nothing but giant leaves and no fruit, I pulled all the plants but one (left one in the planter) and set up 4 plants in four 5 gallon SWCs purchased from Walmart on July 1st, 2015.
Long story short, I used too much sand in 3 of the 4 containers and, in those containers I put a good amount of balanced fertilizer. In the 4th container, my control, I used only Kellogg Premium Potting Mix and 3/4 Tbs of Epsom Salt + 3 Tbs bone meal + 1 Tbs Sul Po Mag in the hole where I put the seedling.
Resluts: 4th Container thriving compared to the other 3 containers by the end of August 2015.
July 1st was a late time to plant in Southern California for tomatoes. The maturation of the plants is taking about 3 to 4 times longer than if they had they been planted in late April, but they are all surviving. It is surprising to see that two of the containers are actually fruiting quite well (determinates: Better Bush), especially since it has been really cold lately (60 to 70 F during the day and down to 37 F at night). In August, I started feeding the control container gradually until I brought up the total fert equal to the other 3 containers by Dec 1st, 2015.
I think a good technique, if you can do it, is to just feed the plants no more than the amount that they use.
I have 19 tomatoes started on the Control Container and 10 on one of the other 3 containers. We shall see how they survive going forward. But the real lesson I learned here is:
1. NO sand in SWCs.
2. Better Bush Tomato plant can take pretty cool weather and seem to defy the standard temp of over night lows no lower than 55 F.
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