Drowned Tomatoes in a Container

So I have a couple of tomato plants in a big ol' container (plastic faux wine barrel) and they were growing great! Until last week...on wednesday they looked real bad, yellowed droopy leaves. I just didnt know what the heck was going on until I got close and noticed standing water in the pot! Well I tipped out some water, only to realize that I had forgotten to drill holes into the bottom of this pot. The reason for that was I bought an identical pot a week before and drilled that, but for some reason when I planted the second one, I forgot...oh well lesson learned?

Anyway after reading around on how to save drowned tomatoes, just about everywhere was saying to pull them out and replant them, but we just dont have the space so I decided to try something new. I took the pot up on my deck to make sure no additional rain was adding to my problem. Then I put the pot up on 2 bricks. I layed a tower style fan on the ground to blow under the pot, and I placed a box fan up on top of a couple bricks to blow across the top of the pot.

My intent was to try to dry the soil out as quickly as possible. I left the fans on for about 36 hours and the tomatoes are looking WAY better. I picked off most of the damaged foliage and put it back outside in its normal spot. I am very confident that they will recover at this point.

I will keep you all updated on how it turns out. Unfortunately no pics.

Just wanted to share with you all if you run into a similar situation.

Eeegads! well good luck, once the soil dries out some. tip the barrel and drill a few holes. Good luck~

Oops, meant to mention before I took the pot up on the deck I did drill some holes. The soil is nice and dry now after my fan treatment.

I'm glad to hear you were able to salvage your plants.

I'm amazed at how quickly the fans in my greenhouse dry out my MM. It certainly gives me a better appreciation for the problems faced by SFGers in windy climates.

I did this once and was able to salvage the plants by drilling holes after the fact. We put the planter on two saw horses and drilled up and into the pot - then twisted the pot on the stands until we had drilled a total of seven holes. The plants recovered just fine (though mine were flowers and not tomatoes.)