Me= Colorado springs zone 5, 6700 feet, small 10x10 tent greenhouse heated and cooled 50-95F.

Plants = STupice, Bush early Girl, Super Fantastic, Clint Eastwood, Lemon boy, Sweet cherry 100, various random Heirlooms, Black Krim, more. some from seeds, some from 6 packs, a few big ones from local Garden stores.

After 5 years of raising tomatoes, (some years bad, one very bad, one very good) I will share what I have humbly learned:

Rule #1-- Sometimes its just luck; Do not mistake good luck for having skill and knowledge- especially in gardening and the stock market. This will be expensive. especially in gardening.

Rule #2-- The most common problem in gardening is over watering.

Rule #3-- each plant gets the water they need, no standard watering schedules work unless its rule #1.

Sooo, we had a trip planned for a wedding. I asked my only available neighbor to water my greenhouse tomatoes while I would be away a week. He=non gardener. I watered on Wednesday, told him to water them all on Saturday. He watered as I instructed unfortunately. Now I am drying them out. Lost 5 of 30. 5 more in the recovery room.

I thought that I had been learning a lot, and would never be guilty of over watering.

The Tomatoes stuck in the house a week with no watering are perfectly happy; they sat by the picture window with a few grow lights at 55-80F for a week. lost none of 30.

2 years ago When I was doing outdoor gardening, I had the watering system on once every other day for 45 minutes. but I forgot that I spent a month modifying the water nozzles to give the plants the water they needed. (See Rule 3)

Nature humbles me. Again.

Anyway, I am trying to use the Grocery store (whole foods/ sunflower market) permeable poly bags as my growing containers. Using a few 5 gallon size and things seems to be OK for now after 3 weeks; going up to the 7.5 gal size soon for the big 'maters.

Found a deal on that pearlite stuff so had to buy a 2 cu foot bag for $12. Now my poly bag pot mix is 1:1:1:1 Compost -garden soil -pearlite- Lowes stagrow. Still looking for a good value easy fertilizer. Using some old Miller tomato fertilizer for now, but it will soon be gone.

Wife will put several tomatoes in the ground Sunday after the front range cool spell.

I am staying with containers-- and no long vacation trips till fall.

comments and suggestions welcome.

D in Colorado