Tomato plant update - final

Although tomato season isn't over yet, this will probably be my final report on the hanging basket tomato plants that we experimented with this year. As you can tell from the pictures, the plants never really got very large, which isn't surprising given the limited size of the root ball. So the advertised advantage of not needing additional wire cages or strings to corral the tomato plant is certainly valid. They never outgrew their suspended roots.

Actually, the size restriction on the roots seemed to cause the other concern we had - watering. In the Sacramento summer heat (several consecutive weeks of 90 plus temperatures) the limited root system in the hanging basket simply couldn't protect the plants or give them an adequate reserve. We watered daily but three or four times daily probably would have been necessary to really keep the plant healthy. And even a two day vacation was out of the question without someone to tend the plants. Plants growing in well-watered properly balanced soil could go for several days.

We did avoid any problems with snails or cutworms as the plants were never in contact with the ground. It was therefore more of a surprise (although it shouldn't have been) to find a big fat tomato caterpillar on one of our vines. His voracious appetite gave him away.

We harvested 2 or 3 tomatoes that didn't have a brown spot on the end caused by uneven watering. All the rest started out looking good but suffered before maturity. We're probably going to try again next year with cherry tomatoes in the hope that their maturing cycle will be shorter.