I am at a loss

[amideutch]

OK, to check your moisture level either stick your finger in the aggregate or lift one end of the tote to check it's weight and you should be able to gauge the amount of moisture. 18 gal totes you should be able to get away with watering once a day but your will need to check periodically.
Get some Calcium Nitrate, available from Hydroponic stores and if they don't carry it they should be able to tell you where to get it. You don't need that much maybe a couple pounds and mix 1 Tbls per gallon of water and apply as a drench once a week to start with and monitor your plants.
The yellow leaves at the bottom are normally from lack of nutrients because as the plant grows the new growth is taking most of the nutrients as well as the fruit and the bottom leaves are getting bypassed. The addition of the Calcium Nitrate should alleviate this to a certain extent. Ami

[Qweniden]

Thanks everyone. I hope this BER clears up.

[dice]

The "feeds for up to six months" in potting soils with
fertilizer is misleading. The fertilizer levels are minimum
at best, about what one might use for starter fertilizer
when sprouting seeds. Some houseplants might be able
to live on this, but a tomato plant is a relatively heavier
feeder.

One always needs to add a source of calcium and a more
substantial fertilizer. I added two handfuls of gypsum and
a handful of fertilizer (5-10-10) to each container, mixing
the gypsum in thoroughly as I filled the container, and mixing
the fertilizer into the top few inches of container mix. I expect
to need to add another handful of fertilizer per plant when
they start to set fruit. (I will just scatter that on the top and
let watering and rain wash it in, so as not to destory any
roots.)

My pH in my container mix was good to start with, 6.5-7.0.
If it had been lower, below 6.0 say, I would have used a
handful of gypsum and a handful of dolomite lime for
calcium sources. (The gypsum also adds sulfur and the
dolomite lime also adds magnesium.)

Where you are at, I expect that they have E.B. Stone
products in the garden departments of stores. This would
be a good one for the fertilizer part:
http://www.groworganic.com/item_F306...453_15_lb.html
(It is a little short on potassium for my taste, but you can adjust
that with the occasional tablespoon per gallon molasses soil
drench. It also lacks iron. I don't know if that will be a problem,
depends on if there is any in the container mix. Calcium levels
are good, 9%, and it has very low levels of toxic metals.)

[Qweniden]

How often do you feed your plants dice?

Im using Alaska all purpose plant food. https://www.planetnatural.com/site/plant-food.html

Not sure if its any good.

I also put a small capful of miracle grow synthetic stuff in the watering can.

I had to pull 10+ unripe tomatoes with BER in the last 24 hours Its especially hard to pull the Cherekee Purples and Brandywines.

[Qweniden]

Originally Posted by amideutch

apply as a drench once a week to start with and monitor your plants.

Sorry for the dumb question but what is a drench? Is that on the plants or in the soil?

[dice]

A drench is a "soil drench". I feed mine once when I mix in
the handful per plant at transplant, and again about the
same amount when they start to set fruit. They also get
watered in with fish+kelp in solution at transplant. Anything
that looks a little underfed (smallish with a not particularly
green appearance, top to bottom) might get an extra dose
of fish+kelp or alfalfa tea or something like that to get it
going, or I might foliar feed it with mild Miracle Gro or similar.
The individual tweaks depend on the plant, the weather, what
all I have on hand, etc.

For plants showing iron deficiency symptoms (new growth looks
yellow instead of green), I use Fertall Liquid Iron Chelate,
a tablespoon per gallon for a foliar feed or 2 tablespoons per
gallon for a soil drench. It is 5% iron, in a form easily absorbed
by roots or foliage.

I get it from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply, whose website
is inaccessible at the moment (else I would post the URL;
router or dns server crashed or something).

Your fertilizer sounds ok, although I have not used it. With
a 9-4-4 NPK ratio, you probably get a lot of green growth
from the plant. It would be good to use with soil or container
mix that has a lot of half-decayed compost in it (big chunks
of stuff). It does have some calcium, so your BER problems
may be all soil moisture related, or maybe it is simply not
enough calcium for all of the fruit that are forming and the
leaves and stems that are growing, too.

[Qweniden]

Originally Posted by dice

A drench is a "soil drench"

Is it a complete sturation?

Originally Posted by dice

. I feed mine once when I mix in
the handful per plant at transplant, and again about the
same amount when they start to set fruit. They also get
watered in with fish+kelp in solution at transplant. Anything
that looks a little underfed (smallish with a not particularly
green appearance, top to bottom) might get an extra dose
of fish+kelp or alfalfa tea or something like that to get it
going, or I might foliar feed it with mild Miracle Gro or similar.
The individual tweaks depend on the plant, the weather, what
all I have on hand, etc.

So if I understand you just feed a few times a year? Do you have regular or SWCs?

Thanks!

[dice]

[soil drench]

Is it a complete saturation?

More or less. If I mix up a gallon of something and pour
most of it into a 5-gallon container, it is probably saturated
top to bottom. If I pour it into a 20-gallon container, it may
only soak in a foot or so deep. Either way works (the roots are
going to find it).

So if I understand you just feed a few times a year?

Yes. Reducing maintenance work is the main reason. I have
too many plants to mix up soluble fertilizer for them all every
two weeks for an entire summer, and I do not have a
fertigation setup where soluble fertilizer is automatically
fed into an irrigation system.

I grew a garden many years ago, in the ground, where I simply
turned over a bunch of sod and weeds, planted seeds, and
I fertilized by "side dressing", which amounts to pulling
a little inch-deep, inch-wide trench with a hoe along the row
6 inches or so out from the plants and filling it with pelleted
fertilizer. I used 10-20-20 and followed the directions on the
box for how much to use. That one application was plenty of
fertilizer for the whole season for all of the plants (in what
was good soil to begin with, I have to admit).

I am always trying to get to that point with tomatoes,
where I fertilize once in the spring and that is enough
for the whole season. Some people do not fertilize at all.
They have good soil with plenty of calcium, phosphorus,
magnesium, and other trace elements, their soil pH is near
perfect, and every fall or spring they mix in copious amounts
of compost, which provides enough nitrogen and potassium
for tomatoes for the whole summer. Most of us are not quite
at that point and still need to add some fertilizer in spring,
at least, to keep our plants fed through the summer.

Do you have regular or SWCs?

Both. The description above was for regular containers
that drain through the bottom. For self-watering containers,
I use something analogous to side-dressing, where I make
a shallow square trench (fingertip deep) around the plant
about a foot out from the stem on top of the soil and fill
that with fertilizer (what rnewste calls "the picture frame
method"). That is often enough for the whole season with
those. The fertilizer gradually dissolves and is dispersed
through the container mix in the self-watering containers
by capillary action. If any plants in the self-watering containers
look like they need a little something extra, it is easy to add
a tablespoon of something water-soluble to the water reservoir
via the fill tube.

[RandyG]

Originally Posted by nctomatoman

My take on container growing (which is mostly what I am doing with tomatoes) - you can't over water them if you are using good soil less mix augmented with compost, giving good drainage. You certainly can underwater them, though...My experience is that if you let the plants visibly wilt when actively developing fruit will bring on the BER. I am using 10-15 gallon containers for indeterminates, 5 gallon for dwarfs - and in the heat of the summer with mature, fruiting plants, I am watering twice a day - morning and late afternoon - until the water is coming out the bottom.

I agree with this completely. Under conditions of adequate calcium supply in the mix plants are grown in, BER is caused by stressing plants with too little water. Just letting a plant stress one day for a short period of time will induce BER. It appears under these conditions that the plant actually dessicates the fruit by pulling water back out of the fruit under water stress leading to BER. I used to grow a lot of fairly large tomato plants in 2-gal. containers in the greenhouse and was successful, even in such a small pot, to prevent BER by never letting the plants stress for water after the fruit set. Before fruit set, however, it is important to manage the plants with some water stress, especially under cloudy conditions, so they don't grow too lush and suffer poor flower development.The key is to water the plants until the water drips freely from the bottom of each pot at the end of watering and to water as many times a day as necessary (up to 4 times with 2-gal. pots) so the plants never suffer a water shortage. Under hot, sunny conditions the plants use a lot of water and can stress very quickly. In a well drained mix, you can't over water if you have holes in the bottom of the containers for the water to drain out when the mix becomes saturated. You do have to feed frequently and adequately so you don't run into a nutrient shortage. A constant feed at a fairly low rate works well.

[Qweniden]

Originally Posted by RandyG

A constant feed at a fairly low rate works well.

Could you please be more specific on this? What do you feed, how often and how do you do it? Thanks!!

[Qweniden]

BTW, thanks to everyone who has helped here.

I think my troubles have stemmed from reading too many times "dont overwater tomatoes" so after a month of fairly heavy rain I was very sparing with watering. Now Im paying the price.

[dice]

Too cheap to live without if growing tomatoes in containers:
http://www.horticulturesource.com/hy...38104715d7b28d
(Don't trust the pH without testing it against a neutral buffering
solution first to see how far off it is.)

[Qweniden]

Originally Posted by dice

Too cheap to live without if growing tomatoes in containers:
http://www.horticulturesource.com/hy...38104715d7b28d
(Don't trust the pH without testing it against a neutral buffering
solution first to see how far off it is.)

Thank you.

If I keep the soil constantly moist is that bad for the plants? The "don't overwater your plants" advice confuses me because its not clear exactly what overwatering actually is.

[amideutch]

Like I said before, your growing in an open container with holes in the bottom. When you water the container the water percolates down through the aggregate and out the drain holes. So no water can accumalate unless the holes plug up. So when the weather is warm out water once a day. If it rains skip a day or untill it stops raining. If you have a heat wave then you might have to water twice a day but with a 18 gal tote I don't think so. Watch your plants as they will be your guide. Last year I had Rain the whole month of July here in Germany. I didn't water my plants once the whole month. But because they were open containers with holes in the bottom I didn't worry about it and they did stay moist for the whole month with no damage to the plants. Just didn't grow that much. Ami

[Qweniden]

Originally Posted by amideutch

If you have a heat wave

Summer in sacramento is one long heat wave

Actually this summer has been really cool (comparatively)...which is what threw me off.