By all means, drilling more holes is not likely to hurt.

I cannot remember what kind of soil-less mix you used, but if you used garden soil or top soil instead of a soil-less mix, then that's the problem and drilling more drainage holes may help somewhat, but if the soil is too heavy and holds excessive moisture, then new holes alone won't solve the problem.

We only get too kinds of rainfall here in Oklahoma---too much or too little. It is almost never "just right". That's one reason that using a good, well-draining soil-less mix in containers is so important.

I don't even know what to say about the orchid fertilizer since we don't really know what kind of fertility your growing medium contains, nor do we know how much, if any, you've already fertilized them or if your growing medium contains a pelletized fertilizer. If the color of the plants is poor and they look undernourished or if their growth is slow, then it is likely that fertilizing with the orchid fertilizer occasionally at half-strength won't hurt. However, I'd wait until the soil is drier before feeding them. The act of watering with a water-soluble fertilizer at a time when the plants are waterlogged would not be extremely helpful and if the roots are waterlogged already they would not be able to take up the fertilizer anyway.

Good luck,

Dawn (from soggy Love County where my tomato plants are being rained upon right now.....and they don't even need it right now since it rained 3.5" less than a week ago)

I did repot them with a soiless potting mix, along with about a 1/3 mushroom compost (which now that I think about it is probably why I'm getting so many mushrooms popping up...)
I also mixed in whatever I had left of my peat moss (just around the roots since I heard it was good for root development) and I made sure not to pack it down at all. So I feel like other than being completely waterlogged they're pretty healthy. Most of them have been a pretty consistent deep green.
I figured that they probably still have enough food left in the mixture for another month or so.

However they are slow producing and growing tomatoes. I've noticed on here most people are already getting their first crop when they planted way after I did. I don't know if container plants take a bit longer or what. I'm just grateful I have tomatoes at all right now. Last year I could barely get a bloom.

unfortunately all of the name tags blew away earlier in the year... so I have no idea what variety is what anymore. I do know that all of the ones I planted this year were less than 75 days, because I wanted something that would ripen before another summer like last year hit. I noticed the first little bud of a tomato around the first of May. Maybe I'm just being a bit impatient, but it just seems like they're going sooo slow.

Britt,

I'm relieved to hear that you repotted them.

Do you remember more or less when you planted the tomatoes in the containers to begin with? I sort of think you ought to be getting ripe tomatoes by the end of June if you got fruit set in early May, but it could be later than that because the act of repotting them would have set them back for a week or two merely because the roots were disturbed.

It doesn't pay to compare your tomato development and harvest to anyone else's because we all have different soil conditions, different weather conditions, different amounts of sunlight and different varieties growing so none of us will have exactly the same results. All that comparing your tomatoes to someone else's will do for you is drive you mad. I realize that it is human nature to read the different threads here and said "OMG, so-and-so is already getting ripe tomatoes and so is so-and-so", but this is a big state with highly variable soils and weather and even people who live a mile or two from each other can have very different results from plants that were transplanted into the ground or their containers at the same time.

Let me try to put it into perspective for you by describing how long it has taken my tomatoes to fruit, and I have varieties with DTMs (which are estimates only and not engraved in stone) that range from 49 days to about 80-85 days.

I bought a handful of large tomato plants in 5" peat pots at a store in Dallas in about the third week of February, and put them into containers and got ripe tomatoes from them beginning the last week of April, and that was with a lot of rainfall and decent weather, though I had to protect them from a few cold nights---though not too many cold nights as our last frost here was March 5th, I think. So, that was about two months from transplantation to fruit with the earliest ones to produce, and some of the later ones in that bunch didn't produce their first ripe fruit for another 3 weeks...or almost three months from transplanting to harvest.

With tomato plants in the ground, I started putting them into the ground March 12th, and continued putting a new batch into the ground about every 7-10 days through the first week in May. How many of those have produced so far? Well, the big production has come from plants that went into the ground March 12th and 13th, and from the two rows that went into the ground in late March. The plants that went into the ground in early April have not produced much fruit yet--just a handful of paste tomatoes, but they are heavily loaded with green fruit that I expect will begin to ripen in the next week or two. The plants that went into the ground from mid-April through earliest May have green fruit (or blue fruit in the case of Indigo Rose)--some have a little, some have a lot, but I don't expect a harvest from them at all until July. So, maybe seeing how long it takes my plants to produce in comparison to when they were planted will give you some insight into whether yours are slow to produce...or not.

One thing about growing tomatoes in containers that can be problematic is that it doesn't take them very long to get too dry and it is easy for them to become malnourished since every time you water or every time it rains the nutrients wash out of the soil along with the excess moisture. Thus, the biggest challenge with container tomatoes is keeping them evenly moist and well-fed. I have grown tomatoes in 5-gallon buckets. I did it for a long time as I slowly amassed bigger planters, and I don't think I'll ever go back to growing the indeterminate types in 5-gallon buckets again because it requires so much watering. You can get a good harvest from them, but the hotter the weather gets, the harder it is to keep them producing heavily. Sometimes, in a mild spring, the ones in 5-gallon buckets produce earlier than the ones in the ground, but generally once the weather is hotter, they slow down tremendously, and you might recall that the weather in May was abnormally hot and dry in much of the state.

I'm linking a website that shows the progression of a Big Beef tomato truss from bloom to ripe fruit, and in fact beyond that point to overly ripe fruit. Look at those photos and note how long the tomato stayed pretty much its mature size before it broke color and began to ripen.

Growing tomatoes will teach you patience, and probably a few other things besides that. I say that with a smile on my face. I've been growing tomatoes for as long as I can remember dating back to being a young child following my dad around the yard and garden in the 1960s, and there still are times when their behavior drives me nuts. This year I felt like the plants that went into the ground March 12th=13th never were going to ripen. They probably weren't really late to ripen considering how hard the May weather was on them, but I was really getting impatient, so I do understand exactly how you feel.

As for the yellow leaves, look at them carefully because yellowing foliage can indicate a variety of issues, including some diseases. If you're seeing brown, black or purplish patches on the yellow leaves, we probably need to talk about disease issues. Having said that, yellowing foliage is very common on tomato plants at this time of year because stress causes yellowing of leaves too, so just the fact that the leaves are yellow does not necessarily mean they are diseased--it just means they are stressed.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Timeline of A Tomato Truss

I believe I put them into containers early March. I've been keeping a progress log of pictures and the earliest I have of the containers is March 15, and I generally wait a week after changing anything out there before taking pictures. So I bet it was around March 8 that I put them in containers and started putting them outside for a few hours a day.

I didn't know repotting could disrupt the process like that - so I bet thats it. I repotted them the first time into the 5 gal buckets with the garden soil, and then 2 weeks later is when I repotted again to replace that with potting mix. So it probably didn't help them at all to be disturbed like that.

I guess most of mine are cherry/grape variety that have tomatoes at the moment since they're still pretty small on day 40 something.

I would put them in the ground, but I don't know what the soil is like here at the apartments. All my other plants that I have in the ground around here have much shallower root systems so what soil I put in with them is enough. It seems like a good area - after all it was a garden for nearly a decade before I moved in. I may try doing it directly in the ground next year if I'm still here, though that means moving all of my bulbs. I like containers because I have more control over them. if it's too rainy, I can move them into the breezeway (which I will probably have to do sometime this week), or if they're getting scorched, I can move them back a couple of feet to the shade. I can move them against a wall for high winds... it's just so much easier.

now I have another question. And this may also be why my tomatoes are so delayed. Is it best to transplant directly to a 5 gal? because for me, I generally repot several times according to their size. I start them in the little peat cups, then once they get about 4 inches with true leaves I move them into a pot a little bigger than the cups, and then about 6 inches I move up again, until they're about a foot tall and then I put them into the 5 gal. Is that just too much stress?

Britt, I don't think it is too much repotting and generally would not be too much stress. To some extent, the stress of repotting can encourage the plants to grow, which is good. It would be much worse to leave them in a smaller container and have them become rootbound and stunt or stall in their growth. When that happens, they sometimes won't start growing again for a week or two after they're potted up to a larger container. Apparently they take being rootbound rather personally and like to hold a grudge.

Some people start their seeds early, and progressively pot up to larger containers over a period of many weeks. I used to do that too and still do it to some extent, but not as much as I used to. As I have continually increased the number I grow, I just don't have time to repot them as much as I used to.

I start my seeds in a 72-cell flat, and each seed variety gets one cell in the flat, so I can start 72 varieties in one flat, cutting down on the space needed on the light shelf. So, if I am growing 20 'Heidi' tomatoes, all 20 seeds go into one cell. Obviously when you do that, you have to pot them up pretty quickly because they cannot tolerate being that crowded for too long. Once the seedlings have two tiny true leaves, I pot them up to 3 oz. or 5 oz. paper cups, and I usually pot up two seedlings to one pot. I plant them as deeply in the cup as I can each time I pot up. Ultimately, I'll pinch out the weaker one and let the stronger one stay, but only after I know they've survived being potted up and have started growing again. Once they are getting tall enough that they are too top-heavy for the paper cups, I pot them up to plastic cups that are either 16 or 20 oz. They stay in those until I put them in the ground. I'm pretty far south and can put them into the ground earlier than those of you who are further north could do most years. If I couldn't, I'd probably pot them up to 1 gallon pots and keep them in those until I could put them in the ground.

I understand why you like using the containers. Maybe next year you could try one or two in the ground and see if you believe there is any advantage to growing them in the ground. There may be, but there may not be, depending on the soil there and how well it does or does not drain.

Even though most of my tomato plants are in the ground, I always grow some in containers. This year I have about 80 plants in containers, but most of them are tomato varieties bred specifically for containers. I also planted one plant each of Lizzano and Terenzo, AAS Winners that are cascading type plants meant for hanging baskets, into the ground to see how they'd do in the ground instead of in a hanging basket, and they have performed phenomenally well, producing loads and loads of tomatoes. However, the spider mites in the garden are hitting them pretty hard. I normally don't have as much of a spider mite issue on the plants in containers because they get more attention, and I can move them around to less stressful locations. Spider mites always seem worse on stressed plants.

If I could, I'd grow everything in containers because of the element of control, but there's no way I ever could afford the soil-less mix for all the containers I'd need. My container tomatoes usually resist disease and pests better than the plants in the ground, so they usually make it deeper into the summer. Often, when it is time to take out the spring-planted tomatoes to make room for fall tomatoes in July, I rely on the container plantings to provide us with tomatoes for fresh eating while I am taking out the old spring tomatoes from the big garden, and putting in new, young plants in July. By the time the container plants are getting old and tired, and stressed by the July/August heat, diseases and pests, the new fall tomato plants in the big garden are taking off, blooming and setting fruit. That's one way you can use both containers and in-ground plants to extend your harvest season.

Dawn