Our tomatoes all had some sort of blossom end rot and were useless. It is possible that the problem was inconsistent watering. Somehow I learned about olla pots which are an ancient sort of in-ground watering system for plants. They are pretty easy to make.
You need an unglazed clay pot plus the same kind of bottom. This is what I made.
This was made with about a 4" pot and a larger bottom. I used Gorilla glue to put them together. Put the plate on the shelf then wet the top of the pot with water. Run a bead of Gorilla glue around the top of the pot then place top down onto the plate. Wiggle around a little bit to make sure the glue is well spread around. Now wait for AT LEAST thirty minutes. I waited longer. The glue surprised me by turning sort of whitish/yellowish. Next I put water inside the pot and watched the clay begin to look wet. It took a few minutes before the whole pot was wet, and thus able to keep the roots wet when put in the ground. Exciting!
This pot is now buried in the container where we are going to plant a tomato here at the end of August in hopes of getting another harvest this season. Well, to actually HAVE a tomato harvest this year!
This pot is now covered up almost to the top with dirt and full of water. A stone has been put on top to keep dirt out of the pot. Every few days we will check to see if there is water in the pot, when we will take off the rock and carefully pour water into the olla pot.
Here is the tomato planted and the rock on top of the olla pot barely visible. We are hoping for the best.
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