Container Tomato Gardening
Use a large enough container. A tomato is a large plant at maturity and anything less than a 12-14” pot is simply wasting your efforts. What tends to happen with smaller pots is the plant dries out early in the season a little and then the fruit gets blossom end rot as a result. You require a large enough container so the plant does not dry out between waterings. You can pay for the larger pot or you can pay by not having fruit in August.
Use a good quality artificial soil all the way to the bottom of the pot. You’re going to read me say this over and over. Nurseries around the world grow millions of pots with soil like this – they do not put shards of “stuff” on the bottom. Using artificial soil prevents mid-season soil compaction. And soil compaction (where the soil turns to concrete) will kill or stunt your tomato growth and fruit ripening as fast as anything. It is for this reason, we never use real garden soil.
The minimum amount of soil you require with daily waterings is six full shovels. You can definitely use more – and your plants will thrive better – but if you use less, you’re asking for trouble.
Tomatoes are greedy feeders so you have to feed them every few days if you want to see great growth and great yields (mind you, if you don’t want either of these things, then don’t bother to fertilizer your plants) The bare minimum of feeding is once a week.
The tomato fruit is over 95% water This means you’ll have to water every day or whenever the soil appears to be drying out. If you miss the watering in your container tomato gardening efforts, your fruit will suffer. There’s little room for error here.
Staking is optional I’ve grown them staked and unstaked. I prefer staked and you’ll have to secure the stake to something or the plant will flop over in every windstorm and that can really ruin the container tomato gardening. The branches are easy to break so do secure them. Letting them flop out of the pot means no staking but you can be sure if there’s slugs around, they’ll be there to enjoy your crop as much as you do.
Insect and disease control is the same as in-ground tomato plants. And so is pruning.
And those are the basics of container tomato gardening; I hope they were helpful. Simply remember that you break these rules at your gardening peril.
Click here if you have a question about container tomato gardening.
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