Guide To Growing Tomatoes In Containers

Modern urban living need not deprive you of the pleasures of home gardening. If you enjoy eating vegetables, you will have even greater satisfaction in consuming your own homegrown vegetables. Growing tomatoes in containers has always been popular among gardeners. It gives apartment dwellers a chance to own a garden despite living in small spaces.

Have you ever wondered why do people grow tomatoes in a container even when they have a yard or garden? Well, the answer is simply for better control, flexibility and convenience.

Tomato plants flourish on warm temperature, ample sunlight and good drainage system. Sporadic fertilizers add a booster to the plant's nutrients and promote the production of large, juicy tomatoes. Similar to planting in the ground, it is advisable to grow tomato plants indoor cautiously and transplant them only when they are hardy enough. In transplanting, you ought to bury as much of the plant stem as possible. This promotes good formation of the roots, which results in an excellent base foundation for your tomato plant.

Growing vegetables in containers allow you to control the state of your growing medium. Once you have learnt your success secrets through your gardening experiments, you can just rinse and repeat it in all your future gardening projects. You can go for total soil-free gardening, organic gardening or a mixture of both. My recommended recipe for good container gardening soil mixture for vegetable growing is 40% compost, 40% peat moss, and 20% perlite.

One of the advantages of having a container garden is the elimination of weeding and messing with garden dirt. However, container vegetables will demand extra care in watering and fertilizing. Tomatoes grown in containers have restricted root coverage and their growth is limited by the amount of water and nutrients in the container. During summer, you may even have to water your container vegetable plants up to twice daily to prevent it from drying up. Give your water thirsty tomato plants ample water and you can look forward to a pleasant harvest.

If you are looking for a more efficient way to watering your tomato plants, you can install automated drip irrigators for your containers. The installation is quite simple and the price is not expensive. An estimated price of an automated drip irrigation system set up ranges between $50 to $100. You could be relieving yourself of a lot of hassles if you have many container plants to take care of. It is unquestionably a good investment that will pay off well in the long term.

One of the methods commonly used to minimize water evaporation is to apply mulch to your containers. This also aids in keeping weeds down if you are using compost or garden soil. Both pine bark mulch and black plastic mulch work great.

When your tomato plants start to blossom, it is time to increase the fertilizers to twice its usual amount. This helps to encourage fruit production and results in better yields. Always keep your fertilization rate regular.

Having your tomato plant blossoming with delicious-looking tomatoes is a wonderful feeling. However, it is advisable to pick your tomato fruits once they are ripe as this encourages the plant to produce a new fruit.

Growing tomatoes in containers is certainly a very flexible and productive gardening practice. Be free to exercise your creativity with your container gardens, as tomatoes are generally hardy plants.


Discover indoor vegetable gardening tips and learn the tricks of container vegetable gardening at the Indoor Vegetable Gardening Blog. Get more gardening secrets and learn how you can grow vegetables effortlessly in your home.