IMO watering twice a week for a plant that size, in a container that size, is not enough, especially if the temps warm up. Check the soil moisture levels daily with a wooden dowel or skewer. They also look a little underfed. Most container growers fertilize often with a liquid fertilizer. Fertilizer spikes are meant more for the ground, not containers. You might get some good feedback over on the containers forum.

Yeah, a very deep soaking would be my first course of action. If it doesn't look happier after that, at least you can rule out thirst!

Looks dry to me (but you need to test that). When I grew in containers last year, I watered twice per day with a timer and soaker hoses. Worked pretty well...just have to play with it until you get the moisture level the way you want it. Even though day time temps have been cooler, tomatoes are heavy drinkers and the sun hitting the black container causes it to heat up. So, it speeds up the evaporation of water from the soil.

The need for constant watering does wash out the nutrients so you need to feed fairly often. I ended up doing 1/2 gallon to a gallon of mixed MG a week per plant, depending on variety.

Tomatoes generally like pretty warm soil. But, if the sun is hitting that black pot for hours a day, it could be getting the roots too hot as well. I shaded my pots with some cardboard and it did seem to help.

Thanks everyone, I thought watering might be the issue and i'm glad it isn't something more serious. I'll try the cardboard also.

Smallish black pots sitting on concrete in 8b CA? I can see the roots dancing and hollering now - ouch! HOT! hot! ouch!! dang! don't touch that! OUCH!

Dave

Definitely. They are really going to cook if you leave them there. Maybe you can wrap something white around the containers.

Yeah, that's why i'm going to use cardboard like mambooman said. I'll put them on plant stands too. Also, Where I live the temps don't really get out of the 70s in the summer because we are closer to the ocean.

I could place them on my raised bed area that's unplanted. I only put them in pots because I used the prime areas for my hierlooms, romas, and big beefs. The raised bed area thats left gets lots of afternoon sun 1-6pm and where they are now near the house they get morning sun 7am-2pm. But if I put them on the raised bed I feel like I should have just planted them there. Is it even possible to transplant plants that size without damaging them?

You can transplant large plants out of a pot, you just want to do it with extreme care. The roots are probably all spiraled up against the pot itself, so when you lift it out, you'll scratch them all up. It'll be an easier job if the potting soil is a little drier, like they are in your pic. After transplant you can give them a *tiny* shot of genuine aspirin water (dilute one 325mg tablet per gallon), then shade the plant from full sun for a day or two. Direct sun can sometimes hurt plants when their roots are trying to recover from trauma.

If the bottom holes are big and numerous enough, you can also drop the pot into the ground, but this is not ideal for long term growth and production imho. I would do it with a pepper plant a lot faster than i would a tomato plant.

First time I ever heard of giving a plant an aspirin :-) I'm just curious what the science is behind it.

"It's in a 7 gallon pot planted with miracle grow potting soil"

Did you actually use the MG Potting Soil? The one that says on the package not to use in containers? If so that could be part of the problem. It tends to compact in containers and stays too wet so that the tomatoes roots can't breathe and that will certainly affect the plant with one of the first symptoms being yellowing of leaves.

If you didn't use the soil, then you need to check the moisture level 4-6" down in the container.

GardenWebber sprouts_honor (Jennifer from Cleveland) had a wonderful suggestion on how to tell whether or not you need to water your tomatoes, and I quote here: "Get a wooden dowel rod (or two) and sink it in the ground near a plant or two and leave it. Pull it out when you think you need to water. If the top is dry and the bottom is a little damp, it's time to water. If it looks dark and feels saturated, wait to water. I use this technique with potted plants that don't like being over watered and it's helpful with in ground plants too."

Betsy

Yes you can plant them in the ground. You will just need to dig a hole bigger than the current pot and a couple of inches deeper, water it good and then carefully remove it from the pot soil and all and set in the new hole.

Aspirin is not required.

Dave

Of course I used the miracle grow for container plants. I know the difference between the garden soil and container soil and always read the directions.The pots drain really well which probably should have been a sign to me that I need to water more. This is my first year doing this and everyone and their mom has a different method and rules of growing so it's a lot of info to take in.

In retrospect I wouldn't use miracle grow in the future I don't really think it's that great. I used the garden soil to prep my raised beds because there were so many great sales on it but I don't think it's really all that great.

I'll look into transplanting the yellow pear this week, I think I will leave the other cherries alone, they are doing very well in the pots. Thanks for the info everyone.