tiffanytwisted

We're going to give the black plastic bags a whirl and sterilize the pots. That approach seems to resonate with all of the gardeners in training. 👩‍🌾👨‍🌾👩‍🌾👩‍🌾👨‍🌾 

Thanks again for all of your help. You guys are the best! 🙂

42 minutes ago, Petee said:

Be sure to cover crop the area where you pulled out the plants.  Otherwise it will grow up in hellaceous weeds before winter and the seeds will still be there in the spring.  Depending on what you use, you will either have a mat of clean dead vegetation into which you can plant next year's garden, or you will find a living crop growing which will need to be turned upside down in the spring which will be green manure.

We didn't deal with the soil yet. It's still in the containers. Can we just dump it? 

Thanks so much for all the information. We picked the tomatoes and put the plants in garbage bags. I think we'll be eating tomatoes for awhile. 🙂

I do think the heavy rain either contributed to the problem or caused it. Some of the tomatoes split on the tops which Google told me was caused by uneven watering which I interpreted as heavy downpours vs regular watering. They suggested mulching around the plants for that but I'm finding that our plant skills are woefully inadequate and we didn't even attempt that.

The containers do have drainage holes but with all the rain, I'm not sure they were adequate either. 

Thanks, everyone for your input. At least I don't feel like our attempt failed or that it was something that we did and we did get some very good tomatoes. I'm not sure gardening will ever be on any of our resumes though. LOL

I'm guessing that we shouldn't use bleach solution on any split tomatoes?

I probably should have mentioned that we're starving college students and that this isn't a conventional garden. We used large containers and assumed if we planted them they would grow. Haha, maybe not and not as simple as we thought. From what you wrote, I'm going with your early blight description. Yes? Someone also mentioned in passing that they should have been pruned but we weren't sure what to prune. It's been an adventure. 

This is the plant that started to go south first.

We're gardening newbies. We decided to plant tomatoes which were doing well until about 2 weeks ago when the leaves on one plant started turning brown. There are tomatoes on the vines but the plant looks like it's mostly dead and the other 2 plants are starting to do the same thing. Where did we go wrong? Should we pick the green tomatoes or leave them to ripen? I know it's late in the season but would appreciate any advice for future reference.