A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2005 Good news but what to do?

Hello everyone!! I need some advice on something.

The good news is that my boyfriend and I are going to Indianapolis for all 3 races this weekend. WOOHOO!! And with the help I've received on this wonderful board, our peppers are doing well (we just pickled 3 pints) and our tomatoes have stopped getting BER. (we had our first one a few days ago...delicious!)

Since we are going on vacation, we will be unable to water our plants for about 4 days. We don't know our neighbors well enough to ask them to water our plants for us, so what should we do?

I figured what we could do is water the plants Thursday morning before we leave (as we water them every morning). Give them the usual amount of water, wait 10 minutes, water them again after it drains down through the soil and roots, and then cover the soil with mulch (they are in pots so we have about 2 inches of space for mulch.) I don't want to overwater them but they do need to stay moist for 4 days! We'll be back on Monday afternoon/night, and if it's not too late in the day I will water them then if there's enough sunlight left, or if they look wilted (let's hope not!)

Does this sound like a good plan of action?? Should I cover the soil with plastic instead of mulch, or in addition to the mulch, or would this cause mold to form?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated... I'm still a novice at this stuff!! Thank you

PS... forgot to say this... We have 4 tomato plants in pots... about 3-4 foot high plants. We also have 4 pepper plants of various varieties, in pots, that are 2-3 feet high. Thought this bit of info might make a difference in the advice I receive. Thank you again.

Do you have any bowls or buckets large enough to put the pots in? I'm thinking you could put them into containers,water them and then fill the containers with water so they would have a constant source of water while you are gone. The plant should soak up what it needs from the drainage holes in the bottom of the pot.

Whaddya think?

G-Mom

hmmmmm that is a very good idea. My boyfriend is a painter and we probably have a few 5-gallon buckets we MIGHT be able to squeeze the pots into. I'll run it past him when he gets home. thanks!

I have peppers growing in 8" pots that I haven't watered since ... close to a week I think. They need it but they had a couple days rain where they were soaked constantly. I'd think if you watered to the point where the dish overflowed you'd be find for 4 days.

LMT, wow, 8" pots and you haven't watered in a week? Tres bizarre..if I leave my container dwarf tomatoes and tomatillos for a day, they look at me like I'm the world's worst mom. Visualize yellow tomatillo leaves dropping and major wilt happening and this is with pro-mix for containers that contains water-retaining crystals. I'd put them inside big saucers with extra water or place inverted large plastic pop bottles filled with water 2" into the soil for additional water uptake.

Julianna

I don't know what do tell you. They were fine, droopy. The Cherry peppers are getting big, the bells are forming and I ignored them (even though I knew they needed water.) What's a day?

I think plants need a certain about of stress to thrive.

Visualize a plant 48 hours from death.

Ok, back from our trip! OMG our poor plants!! My boyfriend got all pissed when we got home, tomato plants looked dead!! but I had some hope, vines are so resilient! it's 2 days later, they look alot batter, got some BER and had to trim off the leaves that were all yellow and shriveled. pepper plants turned out just fine though. I think the tomato plants will make it still. We've got about a month and a half of growing season left here, I'm hoping all turns out well. We've gotten 6 tomatoes so far off the plants and they were so good I couldn't believe it!! I'm crossing my fingers we'll have planty to harvest.