Overwatered tomatoes - help please!

[MrFraser]

Hi all,

Newish allotmenteer here, got our plot at the end of last summer so this is our first growing season.

One of the main things I wanted to grow was tomatoes. I’m growing some in grow bags (outside) and so far I have one bag with 3 black cherry tomato plants which all look fine, and one with 3 Roma tomato plants. I’ve been watering them every day since Tuesday as I was advised they’d need a lot to drink being in bags...but I think I maybe took the advice too far as today when I went one of my Roma plants looked a bit pale - not yellow but two of the leaves had sort of faded misty looking colouring on them and another just looked quite washed out. Not vibrant green. I’m possibly over panicking but I don’t want my first foray into tomato growing to be a disaster. Stupidly I also gave them another drink today, this was before I noticed the leaves.

The plants are quite small too - bigger than seedlings but only about 15cm high if that. There were some little slugs in the grow bag too to I evicted them and then sprinkled a few slug pellets around.

What does it sound like to you knowledgable folk? Is there anything I should do?

Thank you in advance 😊

[veggiechicken]

Hi, I don't know where you live, but its very cold at night for outdoor tomatoes, especially when they are only 15cms tall. Can you put some sort of cover over them until the weather improves?

[jackarmy]

Yep, agree with VC, too cold for outside atm, if their that small could you take them inside for a while longer ?

[rary]

As vegiechicken has said they are a bit small for planting out, but as they are out, cover if required and ease up on the watering,just keep the soil moist, a good way to check this is by putting a newspaper page on top of your compost and press down lightly if the paper shows damp its fine, if dry give some water, too much water is just as bad as not enough, but I would recommend that you set your bags up to self water

[Aberdeenplotter]

Yups too early for toms to be outside. We had frost last night up here. If your growbags are now sodden, take the tomato plants out and replant in pots with fresh general purpose compost. Water but as Rary says, keep moist but not wet and keep them inside until they recover and then harden off before planting outside.

Now to the sodden growbags. Empty the compost on top of a sheet of polythene or similar and leave outside to dry off (and pray it doesn't rain in the meantime). When dryish/damp, bag up again till needed and then plant your toms in large pots of your compost and then water sparingly when needed.

[Kirk]

Add a fertiliser to the water you are giving them. You will also be washing out the soluble fertiliser that was in the grow bag initially. So in effect they have no nutrients to draw on now and could be a deficency of something.

Add a location, as where you are is going to be relevant. So far you appear to have 2 from south Wales saying if too early and one from Aberdeen. So a fair spread of possible climates/weather and no real indication of what your location actually is - Scilly Isles or Jersey perhaps?