Potted tomatoes with sunburn?

Question

I have a large beefsteak tomato plant on my patio, planted in a 3.5 x 1.5-foot pot. The tomato plant itself is probably about 2.5 feet tall right now and about 3 months old. It has never had fruit yet. It lives outside on the deck, where it gets shade from the lattice patio roof, but some of the leaves and stems are brown and dry and dead (the rest are dark green and firm). It has been almost 100 degrees daily here in Dallas for weeks now with bright sun and no rain. I water my tomato every evening, flooding the pot. I'm concerned about the dead stems and leaves and the fact that there have been no tomatoes yet. Am I doing something wrong? Should I just pick off the dead parts and just not worry? What about staking the tomato? How long before I can expect to see some fruit?

Answer 1

Sorry to tell you this but it sounds to me you may have done a few things wrong. Beefsteak tomatoes are the last variety you want to grow in a container. The reason is they get very big. I also don't like the size of your container because its too narrow. If you said 3.5 by 3.5 feet that t would be a different story. But even so Beefsteak don't like being in a container. You might have been better going with a different one with smaller fruit like Betterboy. Tomatoes need at least 4-6 hours of direct sun per day. Frankly your Beefsteak is too small for its age and it sounds to me like that 1.5 feet width is choking the roots a bit and this is causing the smaller size of the plant. Make sure it is getting more sun than what you are giving it. They won't make flowers to make tomatoes if there is not enough sunlight. Its good that you are watering them everyday. But a serious draw back of using containers is that when the water goes out the bottom (holes in the container) you lose a lot of the nutrients with the water that leaves the container. So you have to fertilize with a good quality slow release pellet type of plant food. And add some  every 2-4 weeks (depends which type you use).