Container garden had surprising success

Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2009 | 1 a.m.

Angela O'Callaghan

Last week I described my group of little gardens in pots. Although creating a vegetable garden in pots is often considered a fool's effort in our challenging climate, I decided it was worth experimenting with this system. The salad vegetables were the earliest, having been started toward the end of winter, and were very successful.

Crops like tomatoes and peppers are generally thought to be too demanding to grow well in containers here in the Mojave Desert.

While I would never call the tomatoes that developed fabulously beautiful, I was pleasantly surprised when they started producing in late spring and even more surprised that they continue to do so even now.

The tomato flowers started in mid spring, and the first fruits were on the vine before the end of May. Some of the first ones were disappointing, having the dreaded "blossom end rot" (BER). This sounds terribly dire, but it means the bottom of the fruit (the blossom end) is hard, flat and dark brown or black. It is a shock to see, particularly since the rest of the tomato almost invariably looks fine.

This is not a disease; rather an indication that very early in the fruit's development, it did not receive quite enough calcium, because it was slightly underwatered. It would not be a major water deficiency, just enough to interfere with proper development of the fruit. While unsightly, each of the fruits with BER was edible, after cutting off the damaged part. Once I had the irrigation system delivering the correct amount of water, this problem disappeared.

The productivity of an heirloom tomato variety astonished me. Tomatoes appeared on those plants, which are considered too heat sensitive to withstand our temperatures and low humidity. They were not perfect, however. For one thing, their bottoms came to something like a point, so the fruits were inverted teardrops.

The "heat-tolerant" cultivar did not produce any more than the other varieties, although there was a significant difference among them. Those that were not as adapted to our temperatures presented three problems. First, they tended to be small, and second, many of them developed heat cracks. These are long cracks that appear in the skin of the fruit. They indicate that after the fruit had set, the water getting to it was lacking. In order to conserve water, the skin thickened, and became slightly more rigid. After the plant received enough water, it pumped that fluid into the tomato. The tougher skin could not easily stretch to accommodate the water, and cracked. Third, many of these fruits had a white core inside. Removing the affected crack and the white core, however, left very tasty edible fruit.

I had thought that all the plants had died by mid August, until I looked closely before cutting them down. Some branches were indeed dead, but most of the plants were putting out new green growth! I am hoping that this means a fall tomato crop. I will let you know.

Angela O’Callaghan is the area specialist in social horticulture for the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. She can be reached c/o the Home News, 2275 Corporate Circle, Suite 300, Henderson, NV 89074, or editor@hbcpub.com.