Applying Container Gardening to Tomato Gardening

Container Gardening
Tomatoes In Containers

Tomatoes are becoming increasingly popular among vegetable gardeners. However, not many people know the basics of tomato gardening and this is why on Sunday Gardener, we have been posting a lot of tomato gardening tips lately to help some vegetable gardeners out.

In this tomato gardening blog post, we are going to give away 6 Tips to Apply Container Gardening to Tomato Gardening. We often plant our tomatoes on the ground because the plant can grow to a height of around 6 to 7 feet. Even so, it is still possible to opt for container gardening to plant your tomatoes, which allows you to have tomato plants either indoors or outdoors.

Container Size

As mentioned above in the introduction, tomato plants are relatively big in size when they are fully matured. If you choose to apply container gardening to tomato gardening, you need to make sure that the containers that you picked are at least 12 to 14 inches in diameter.

If you fail to provide the recommended container size for your tomato plants, they will not be able to last for the whole season. Even if the plants manage to survive, you can't expect a harvest when every tomato gardener in the country is seeing a red tomato garden.

Proper Soil Mix

You should pick potting soil instead of garden soil to fill up your containers for tomato gardening purposes. Using potting soil helps to prevent compaction, which will slow down the growth of your tomato plants and might even kill it.

pH balance of the soil used is another important factor that you should pay particular attention on. Make sure that the soil can provide sufficient nutrients for the plants and do mix them properly before filling up the containers with them. Also, cover up the holes at the bottom of the containers using stones that are slightly larger to prevent the soil from flowing out while you water the plants later on.

Fertilizers

Fertilizers provide the necessary nutrients that assist in the growth of your tomato plants. Tomato plants require weekly fertilizing and fertilizers of top quality must be used in order to let the plants have optimum growth.

Organic fertilizers are more preferable these days, especially when most gardeners harvest tomatoes to make food and juice. You may also want to check out some liquid-based fertilizers which will assimilate much faster into the soil, allowing the plants to absorb the nutrients more effectively.

Watering

Tomatoes are fruits filled with juices and thus, if you want to get juicy tomatoes during the harvest season, you must make sure that you water the plants consistently everyday. When the temperature seems to be high and the soil is drying up fast, water them twice a day.

Stakes

Staking System is optional when you plan to plant tomatoes using containers. However, if you have the stakes in place, the chances of the branches breaking up will reduce. Also, by not allowing the plants to climb high up, you are actually exposing them to ground pests such as slugs and parasites.

If you plan to place the container indoors, stakes will not be required because the plants are not exposed to rough weather conditions and the risk of having ground pests indoors is reduced.

Pest Control Plan

Having a pest control plan for your tomato plants is just as important as the watering and fertilizing. A pest infestation can kill off the whole container of plants literally overnight if you don't have a plan in place.

Consider stocking up your gardening warehouse with some organic pesticides that will eradicate common tomato plant pests like grubs, caterpillars, slugs, aphids and so on.

The following are some recommended pest control products to get rid of garden pests that will consider a tomato plant as their comfort bed:

  • Grubs: Safer Brand Grub Killer Concentrate
  • Caterpillars: Green Light Organic BT Worm Killer
  • Slugs: Monterey Sluggo Snail and Slug Control for Organic Gardening
  • Aphids: Safer insect killing soap

Start Planting Tomatoes Using Containers Today!

People tend to have the misconception that tomato plants must grow on the ground so that they can enjoy an optimum growth rate. However, if you practice the tips listed above, you can expect a basket of red and juicy tomatoes in the harvest season just like other tomato gardeners.

Get yourself some cheap gardening containers that are big enough and start to plant tomatoes today!

Photo credit: Alabama Extension

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