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Why does nobody tell you to check your pot weight after watering, not before
I've been growing cherry tomatoes and a couple pepper plants on my third floor balcony in Sacramento for about two years now, and last week I finally figured out I'd been watering on a bad schedule the entire time. I always stuck my finger in the soil and if it felt dry about an inch down, I'd water. But my tomatoes kept splitting and the leaves would droop by mid afternoon even though the soil felt damp. Then a guy at the Saturday farmers market (he sells starts, not veggies) asked me how heavy my pots felt after I watered them, and I just stared at him. I lifted one and it was way lighter than it should be for a 5 gallon pot, which meant the water was running down the sides and out the bottom without actually soaking the root ball. I'd been watering the gap between the soil and the pot wall this whole time without knowing it. Now I lift each pot a little after watering and I can tell right away if it soaked through or not. The splitting stopped within about 10 days, which honestly surprised me. Has anyone else had water just slide around the root ball like that, and did you fix it by bottom watering or just watering slower?
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