It’s the last month of ‘winter’ in the tropics, and this means it’s still tomato season. Unfortunately, 2025 has proven to be extremely monsoonal, and we have had so much rain that I have had to make some critical adjustments to the bucket method I use.
We are still getting scattered showers of rain in August. Our soil has not dried out and probably will not dry out for another few months. I tend to grow in above-ground beds or containers, and even those do not dry out! I needed to run the irrigation last year, compared to this year, where I’ve been hand watering. 2025 has presented us with a warm, wet winter in comparison to 2024.
The dampness has had some negative implications for the garden, particularly for my tomato patch, our most prized crop. I needed to make several adjustments to the bucket method to ensure the tomatoes grew properly this year.
The bucket method proved to be my favourite method of growing tomatoes last year. I was excited to use what I’d learned to improve on the yields this year, but what’s that saying about ‘don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched?’
It hasn’t been that way this year! We’ve only had one beefsteak and a handful of cherries so far, which has left us disappointed, but hopeful that the yields will still come.
Critical Adjustment 1: Extra Drainage! Tomatoes are Drowning
The Problem
Tomatoes don’t like wet feet. Despite some of last year’s plants surviving the massive Monsoon season of 2024-2025, this year’s young plants didn’t thrive in potting mix that didn’t drain quickly enough for them. I lost a number of them to what I’m assuming is root rot. I ruled out the usual wilt suspects, verticillium and fusarium, pretty quickly. These plants had not yet produced flowers or fruit, and autopsying them did not show any signs of brown vascular staining, indicative of some wilt viruses.
The method I used last year was to drill five or so drainage holes through the bottom of the buckets with a 6mm drill bit.
Then I drilled eight more around the sides of the bucket, staggered in height. This was not enough for this year’s young plants; they never had the chance to get their roots deeply into the mix, making use of the water and finding the drainage holes.
Ripping out the wilted plants showed the roots barely made it a third of the way down the bucket. Too young to deal with a waterlogged mix. After upending the buckets, I noticed sludge pooling at the bottom and the soil stank. Clear signs of an anaerobic soil.
The Solution
More drainage holes! After losing several young plants that were about 50cm high and discovering the cause, I emptied each bucket, scrubbed it out with bleach, and got out the drill.
I added many more holes through the base and around the sides. I’m a little leery of how this may compromise the integrity of the base. Will I be able to move the buckets around without the bottom falling through? I don’t know yet.
Isolating the potting mix from sitting on the bottom of the bucket was the next step. I laid some gutter mesh at the bottom of the buckets, poured in approximately 5cm of scoria gravel, and then laid more gutter mesh over the top to prevent the potting mix from mixing with the scoria. I should be able to reuse it next year. Excess water should drain freely. Oxygen can flow through the scoria through the drainage holes.
I would have preferred a larger size of gravel, but I did not find any at the time of my purchase.
I raised the buckets off the pavers with pot feet. The buckets will sit flush on the pavers. What good are many drainage holes if water can’t flow away from the bucket itself? An easy amendment.
Finally, and this leads straight to point two, I increased the perlite in my potting mix to make it drain more easily.
Critical Adjustment 2: Potting Mix Amendment! More Drainage!
The Problem
I tend to make my potting mix or extend a commercial mix. I find Searles Premium to be a decent mix and have had success with it last year, especially when I mixed it with extras to bulk it out. Its big downside is the cost, and with 20 20L buckets (plus 10L pots, plus 40L squat pots for the dahlias and chillis) to fill, that cost started to add up fast. I don’t mind paying for quality, but it’s a familiar story in this era: money is tight. This is part of the reason why I garden: to save money growing our food.
The second reason I didn’t opt for that this year? My lowered utility is off the road and I’m driving the Mr’s ute. Searles Premium comes in a 50L or 20L bag. The 50L bag is the best value, and I could transfer the bags from the trolley to my ute with only a little effort. The tray of the ute I am driving now is much higher. I simply cannot lift a 50L bag to the level of my shoulders and throw it in the tray. I head to the Big Green Shed on my own, often in the evening, and there aren’t assistants available to help at that time of day.
Ol’ noodle arms here couldn’t hack it. I needed smaller bags—things I could toss into the tray without assistance. I opted for a cheaper composted mix this year, intending to amend it to something suitable. It turned out to be a heavier mix than I had anticipated, as it retained a significant amount of moisture, despite my normal amount of perlite for aeration.
The Solution
Perlite, perlite, perlite. I had to empty my buckets one by one into the wheelbarrow and remix the potting mix with extra perlite to bulk out the aeration potential. This was time-consuming, however, it also allowed me to fill more pots with the bulked-out mix. My tomatoes were replanted into their buckets with their companion plants, and I didn’t lose any more immediately after.
Critical Adjustment 3: Monitoring pH! Soil is Out of Range!
The Problem
Tomatoes like a slightly acidic soil. And when growth didn’t seem to be as steady as anticipated, I checked the pH with a soil meter. Nearly every single area in my garden, above-ground beds, buckets, and established plants in 200L pots, showed a pH value of 7+. Even the blueberry, which was recently repotted in an acidic mix specially formulated for acid-loving plants, had a value closer to neutral than I would like.
pH is important. Plants can cope with values outside their preferred range, to an extent. They start having problems with nutrient uptake when the issue persists for too long. It’s part of the reason why blossom end rot still occurs after you’ve dosed the plant with all the trace elements. The soil can have all the trace elements in the world, but if they can’t be accessed by the plant because the pH is wrong, then they’re just sitting there, doing nothing, waiting to be washed out of the soil.
I had two plants produce fruit with blossom end rot. That was what triggered me to investigate the pH. I wasn’t happy to find that some pots displayed a pH close to 8. Too high for tomatoes.
Check out the healthy plants below. Look at their leaves. They are lush and green and show no signs of nutrient deficiency.
The Solution
The Closed System of Container Growing and Crop Rotation
I dislike instant fixes; they are far more processed than I prefer. I used a small amount of sulphur to gently lower the pH to a level that tomatoes prefer. It dissolves over time, adjusting the pH as it goes.
I rehabilitate my growing mediums after using them. After I grow tomatoes, I use that mix to grow sweet potatoes in. Tomatoes are heavy feeders, particularly in terms of nitrogen. They strip the containerised mix of many of its nutrients, leaving it depleted. Try growing tomatoes in the same mix again next year, and it will be a poor harvest.
Sweet potatoes don’t mind a nitrogen-depleted mix. Feed them with a nitrogen-heavy fertiliser, and you get a lot of leaf, but not many tubers; all the growth is concentrated into that leaf production.
Rehabbing that mix later involves growing nitrogen-fixing plants, such as beans and peas, in the now fairly depleted mix. A symbiotic relationship with soil bacteria allows the legume to produce its own nitrogen. After I collect my harvest, I just chop and drop the plant and let it decompose back into the soil, assisting the rejuvenation of the soil.
This is a classic example of crop rotation. Power feeders first, then things that like depleted soils, in descending order of hunger for nutrients. In the final season, I will grow a cover crop intended to biofumigate the soil and discourage pathogens, then chop, drop, and let it decompose into the soil to replenish some of its nutrients. This is not a complete fix; this closed system is not completely restored. And it is, to an extent, a closed system. Soil is contained within a boundary, and the natural balance of soil chemistry you would find in nature just doesn’t exist here.
Compost
Enter compost. And compost is, in fact, part of the pH problem. Most organic composts, including those you make at home, fall between neutral and slightly alkaline. When you amend the growing medium with an alkaline product, it will absolutely raise the soil pH gradually. This is also true for items like composted cow manure. They are higher in pH; therefore, they’re going to loan that property to your growing medium.
The best I can do is balance out the pH as much as I can and lower it gently with the sulphur if needed, if there is physical evidence that a high pH is blocking the plant’s nutrient uptake. Otherwise, I’m just going to leave it alone and let nature do its thing.
What’s The Garden Taught Me?
Gardening is always a learning process. No year is the same as the last. Therefore, I must continually seek opportunities to refine my processes and adapt to what nature offers me. The container I grow in is a closed system, but the climate around my plants is not. I work with what I am given.
The cynic in me says, maybe don’t cheap out on my inputs. It’s hard to beat under $5 a bag for potting mix, though. I feel it might be excellent if I emptied all the bags into a compost bin and let it finish breaking down over a year. Maybe I’ll give that a go.
As the garden moves into the beginning of the Dry season, I’ll be harvesting some excellent tomatoes. The plants are getting closer to maturity; thus, I reckon that with the constant observations and amendments, I’ve potentially fixed my problem with the wilting plants. They are older now, stronger, and have moved into fruiting maturity.
Here’s to many more bumper harvests using what I have learned this year!
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