Expect to add at least a gallon of water a day when the temps are cool and the air is still. When it's sunny and windy you could be adding more water and doing that a couple of times a day.

It's important that your container should be lightly colored. If it's black or dark it will absorb heat from the sun, if it is white or pastel, it will reflect the heat. What happens is that the sun can superheat the soil and it can singe immature roots, they then cannot efficiently, if at all, uptake moisture from the soil.

You can also place the container in part shade and have a very successful crop with only six or seven hours of sun everyday.

T

Less is more. If you do too much then you get all leaves and little flowers. I'm fine with light feedings of 10-10-10, or anything which doesn't have a nitrogen number higher than the rest.

Hint for watering containers: Take a 1 gallon bucket and fill it with your hose. Count how long it takes to fill the bucket. You then know that it is a count of x to make a gallon of water. Then when you water your containers, you just turn on the hose and count to x - no longer wondering how much water is getting in your container.

thank you.
Trudi - I'm glad you said what you said about sun. My containers get sun from dawn to 3 pm, I was afraid that wasn't enough, but it should be.

Pixie - that'a good idea. but I always was told to water until the water drips out the bottom - is that not sufficient?

thank you all. you can see I am a like a mother with her 1st child wanting to do everything right. :)

I did do a ramapo in a container 2 yrs ago, but the container was too small. I didn't get too many toms, but those I got were delicious. yummm

Earth boxes are supposed to work great, but they're pretty expensive. You can also make similar from 5 gallon buckets.

Karen

Ray Newstead posts at several garden forums, including the tomato forum here at GW. He has a wonderful design for something called an EarthTainer, which is a self-enclosed growing/watering system. They're relatively inexpensive to make and are ecologically sound.

Here is a link that might be useful: EarthTainer.Org