I’ve returned today from a two week holiday to find my beautiful tomato plants did not seem to survive. I purchased and installed an irrigation system that has seemingly failed while I was away. All plants are drooped, dry and some leaves are outright crispy. Some green tomatoes fell and rotted.
Aside from giving some water and picking the entirely dead leaves, I assume there’s not much more to do. If anyone has any hints or helpful advice, I’m all ears!
by cuddlepot
5 Comments
I’m so sorry
I have a drip irrigation controller by Rachio. I can see when it runs or not, short of someone turning off the water at the spigot and a dripper getting clogged. That’s about as fool proof as it gets for automatic watering. I’m in the Southeastern area of the US, so if my plants went 2 weeks without water they would all be brown.
Give them one good water and then turn the system back on! I know it may seem that all hope is lost but tomatoes are SHOCKINGLY resilient. You may still have them recover, at least some of them!
If you still have strong stems, I would deep soak (slow trickle for hours) in addition to removing the dead leaves. If any of the stems are the thickness of your thumb, cut one or two off and put it in a jar of water. It should root, and the secondary leaves should sprout. If there is fruit (or flowers) on the stem you have cut off, remove it so the plant focuses on rooting. Good luck!
Kratky hydroponics with a BIG bucket per plant….?
I use little 20L (5.28 gallon) buckets, and while the first month is glorious and requires 0 attention to the water, once the plants are bigger with more foliage and fruit, I need to refill 1-2 gallons every 2-3 days for each bucket. I imagine if I had 30 gallon containers per plant, I could go a couple weeks without refilling them. I might die when I do refill them, though, because the RO water comes from my kitchen sink and I have to lug all of it across the yard.