This is my yellow pear tomato plant. It's in a 7 gallon pot planted with miracle grow potting soil and 2 jobes tomato spikes. It was purchased at a nursery and planted in a pot outside the first week of April. has grown pretty steadily in that time but in the last 3 weeks it has looked sickly like this with dark veins and some leaves yellowing. The temps have been in the mid to high 60s most days and the high 40s to low 50s at night.

I have two other cherry tomato plants in pots planted the exact same way. The only difference is that I grew them myself and they are doing great, You can see them in the background of the pictures.

I bought two other tomato plants at the same nursery and they are doing well. They are both black hierlooms, one had a similar problem with dark veins initially and wasn't growing but once I gave them tomato spikes it seemed to get over it and is looking much better and has some tomatoes on it right now.

The yellow pear is flowering like crazy and today has 10 tomatoes at various stages. I was watering twice a week but now i'm thinking that might not be enough?

Thanks

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.

Dave

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.

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

Aspirin is not required.

Dave

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.