Garden Notes

Tomatoes, peppers and basil growing in pots with makeshift "water globes"

I grew up on a farm in northern Wisconsin and my Dad passed along a lot of plant wisdom learned from years of farming. One I remember very clearly was that you needed to rotate your crops in order to get the best harvest. The theory was that the soil would be depleted of nutrients your plants needed and that diseases could be left in the soil from last year’s crop. So, simply by planting your tomatoes in a different section of the garden, you could stay ahead of any problems.

As an adult, when I finally had a yard, I tried to follow that advice. I found, however, that our land had limited space to grow sun-loving plants and that tomatoes were a real problem. Whenever I planted tomatoes in a new area, they were always great. They grew with very little trouble and had no problems with tomato diseases. However, if I kept planting tomatoes in the same area, even if I fertilized heavily, I had more and more problems with pests and diseases. I was not sure what to do since I didn’t want to dig up the whole yard just to grow tomatoes.

Then it hit me! If I couldn’t rotate my crop, maybe I could rotate my dirt. I decided to try growing the tomatoes in large pots on the south side of the house. Using half potting soil and half composted cow manure seemed about the right mixture and the tomatoes loved it. The plants growing in pots produced a lot more tomatoes than the control group growing in the raised vegetable bed. As a side note, no tomatoes had been planted in the raised bed for the previous three years so the control group of plants looked very healthy. This morning I counted at least 40-50 tomatoes on the plants in each pot. They were hard to count because the plants were so lush. I also counted tomatoes growing in the raised bed and there were about 10-15 tomatoes on each plant.

Both tomato locations get a lot of sun and I water both when they are dry. The tomato plants in pots dry out more quickly than those in the raised bed, but I am using old pepsi bottles as makeshift “water globes” (instructions below) in an effort to keep the moisture more constant to avoid blossom end rot. That idea came from my sister Mutsie who is also a gardener and it has been working out great! So far this season I have picked about 15 tomatoes from the potted plants and they were beautiful! Mind you this was during a year with a very hot summer! This year I also tried growing basil and peppers in pots and they seem happy as well.

When the season is over and I have picked all of the tomatoes, I plan to empty the used soil into the perennial garden, wash out the pots and store them until next year and then just repeat the process. This is the third year with some of my tomatoes planted in pots and every year the pots do better than the garden, unless of course I break new ground. So, next year I plan to buy a couple more pots and use the raised bed to grow something else.

The moral of the story is that Dad was right — but if I can’t rotate my crop, I am going to rotate the dang dirt!

Pepsi water globe instructions:

1. Water the potted plant thoroughly.
2. Fill bottle with water – do not replace cap on bottle
3. Push upside down bottle into the the soil of the pot until the neck is buried.
4. As the pot dries out, the bottle will slowly empty its water into the pot to keep it moist.
5. Refill bottle as needed