Container gardening is the perfect outlet for apartment dwellers, assisted care residents, busy suburban families, and even those with lots of space.
It pretty much applies to anyone who doesn’t want to dig up the lawn in the name of growing tomatoes.
If you want easy access to these tips for containers, pots, and tomato plant(s), print them and laminate them. Keep them near your gardening supplies so you have them for next year.
When you grow tomatoes in pots, one worry is always how to manage the sprawling vines or bushes, right? Not to worry, tomatoes grow quite well in just about any kind of pots you put them in.
They only need a support structure, such as cages or stakes, for you to tuck your tomato branches in.
You need to understand the type of plant you are growing. This ensures your tomato plants yield the best results. Choose determinate tomato varieties that stay compact.
Here are a few tips and tricks for growing awesome tomatoes in containers.
Your Pot Size Matters
Before you transplant you ought to consider the size. The growing season may vary from one tomato variety to the next.
Choose determinate tomato varieties that stay compact.
Bigger fruiting tomato varieties for containers include Patio Hybrid, Husky Red Hybrid, and Husky Gold Hybrid.
Container cherry tomatoes include Tiny Tim, Cherry Gold, Red Robin, Yellow Canary, and Pixie Hybrid.
Some normal-sized garden tomatoes that grow well in containers are Celebrity, Mountain Delight, and Mountain Pride.
Want more examples?
| Husky Red Hybrid | Cherry Gold | Celebrity |
| Husky Gold Hybrid | Tiny Tim | Mountain Pride |
| Patio Hybrid | Red Robin | Mountain delight |
| Summer Set | Yellow Canary | Rutgers |
| Bush Goliath | Pixie Hybrid | Biltmore |
| Galahad | Heartbreaker | Plum Regal |
| Defiant PhR | Tumbler | Glacier |
Your pot size is important if you want to ensure success when you plant tomatoes. When growing tomatoes in pots, a 5-gallon container is perfect.
It has enough space for the tomato root systems to grow and is also easy to move if need be.
Note: Clay pots tend to dry out quickly unless they are glazed or painted.
Follow these steps:
- Drill multiple 1/4 inch holes in the bottom of the tomato container. Don’t try to get by with just one drainage hole.
- Place 2-3 inches of gravel at the bottom of the container for drainage.
- Make sure to fill the container about ¾ full with bagged potting soil to start. It should be well-draining soil.
- Your seedlings need to be planted deeply in the soil. This will strengthen the root system and lead to healthier plants. Leave some leaves sticking out above the soil.
- As the plants grow bigger, add fresh soil to the top to support the growing stem.
- If you want to boost your growing tomatoes, you can add organic materials such as rotten shavings. This could be a mix of peat moss, compost, and potting soil perlite.
- Don’t add manure to containers—it may be too strong and burn your plants.
- You can plant three or four marigolds with each tomato to help keep bugs away. The fewer the better because you do not want them to compete with your tomato plants for water.
- Tomatoes in containers should receive full sun (about eight hours a day).
Water Your Tomato Plants in Pots Consistently
A big part of your tomato plant’s success lies in maintaining moist soil. It is also one of the biggest challenges you will face. (But not with these tips!)
- During hot summers or hot, windy days, you should water your plants twice a day. Your tomatoes in pots will need water all summer long. If your plants don’t get adequate water they become weak. In this state, they could easily get blossom end rot.
- You need to know the kind of soil in your pots. If it is fast draining, good water retaining additives or self-watering containers can be used. If not, you can stick to checking the moisture in your soil every day.
- You should watch out for big rainstorms and check that your container tomatoes are not waterlogged. Topwater (all over the foliage) in the late morning so your tomatoes have a chance to dry off before nightfall.
- Place your containers on small blocks up off the ground or deck. Drainage is improved and slugs won’t find a place to hide. Always water your growing tomatoes in pots until you see water coming out of the drainage holes, then stop.
Take note: the soil in a container can be warmed up by the ambient heat surrounding it. This leaves your plants with little water as it will get absorbed or dry up quickly. Check on your tomato plant often to keep them well watered.
Feed Your Tomatoes Carefully
Your plants require primary nutrients – potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus. These are all essentials when growing any vegetables or plants in containers.
To ensure your plants have the proper nutrients:
- Make sure you do not over-fertilize your tomatoes in containers. In the garden, fertilizer has enough room to leach out. The same cannot be said for pots.
- Check the soil bag to confirm whether your potting soil carries any nutrients. It is beneficial to get a potting mix that has these three nutrients.
If it doesn’t, you can give your plant a tomato-specific fertilizer. An all-purpose slow-release fertilizer will work too!
- Give them a shot of nutrition every two weeks. This should be sufficient. You should also stop feeding your plants fertilizer when the tomatoes stop blooming.
- Be sure to use a good bagged potting mix for tomato plants. It seems much easier to dig dirt out of the yard, doesn’t it? Keep in mind that it may be contaminated with bacteria or fungi. Or lack certain nutrients.
Mix a handful of bone meal and several handfuls of good compost in with the bagged container soil. This will boost growth and increase your harvest.
As you grow tomatoes, don’t reuse the soil in your pots from year to year. Always start fresh. You can throw away the soil in the fall. This saves you from having to deal with a frozen, crumbly lump in the spring.
Let Your Plants Soak Up the Sun
Before you bring your tomato plants outside, your seedlings need to be hardened off. They cannot handle too much sun in their early days. Small plants should not be exposed to too much sun or wind or they will weaken.
Regardless of where you want to grow your tomatoes, garden, or balcony, you need to find a place where they will get access to enough sun.
Six hours of full sun will be beneficial to their growth. If you are aiming for the best possible outcome, then eight hours is better. You can use a sun calculator or frequently check on your tomato plant during the day.
Take note of areas that allow enough sunlight for your tomatoes. These areas can also become shady spots as the sun moves across the sky during the day.
It’s okay to move your plants around, they are in pots after all.
Cold is another no-no. Tomatoes like heat.
Also note: If your plants are in temperatures of over 90 degrees, over time (or all summer long) they are less likely to produce flowers. It could also affect the maturity of the fruits.
5. Pruning and Harvesting Your Tomatoes
Here are additional catch-all container tips for your tomatoes:
- Most planter tomatoes do not benefit from pruning.
You only need to be mindful and pinch off suckers (branches growing at a 45-degree angle from the top of another branch).
- Branches that are heavy with fruit should be tied or staked so that they don’t break.
Harvest your tomato plants frequently to relieve the branches of weight. Harvest frequently and the tomato plants may bloom again and set more fruit.
- Just before the first frost in your area, pull the tomato plants out, shake off the soil, and hang them upside down in a garage or shed where they can stay above freezing temperatures and ripen any leftover tomatoes.
Cue in information on planters for tomatoes.
Today there are various innovations meant to make gardening easier for limited spaces. Have you ever considered getting an upside-down tomato planter?
It takes away the need to stake tomato plants by hanging the plant upside down. This causes the vines to grow downwards naturally. Gravity plays a role in helping the plant distribute nutrients and water.
The aesthetic appeal is not lost in the process as you can hang these tomato planters on your balcony or deck.
Why not try to make one yourself? Here’s how.
When your harvest is complete, it’s time to clean up.
Wash all containers, plastic pots, and tools with a mild bleach solution (10 percent bleach, 90 percent water) in the fall before storage.
You should always clean your pots or containers to ensure there are no pests hiding that can become a nuisance later on.
Want to Learn More About Tomatoes?
If you want to grow tomatoes there is a lot more about these plants that you need to know. From the growing season, preservation methods, or pests and diseases to look out for.
You’re in luck!
Gardening Channel has a vast library of articles on plants you can read and put to good use in your own garden. From fruits and vegetables to flowers, you’ll find it all here.
For more information on growing other garden favorites in containers, read on:
How to grow sweet potato slips in containers
The urban gardener’s guide to growing green beans in containers
Can you grow parsnips in containers?
7 best fruits you can grow in containers
Photo from Flickr by Todd Petit
When I try to grow tomatoes, if I plant them in the sun, the fruit have thick tough skins. If I plant them in the shade, they don’t set fruit. Anybody know what I’m doing wrong? Thanks
If you are down south, eight plus hours of sunlight is too much for tomatoes in containers. For years mine have done fine with 6-7 hours of direct sunlight. And you have to water atleast twice a day e=when the temp is regularly over 85.
Must, must, must have full sun. Tomatoes are a tropical plant.
Rig a sunshade with bamboo poles and shade cloth or cheese cloth. Crumble eggshells into the soil.
To much sun and to much shade need to balance it out. no more then 8 hours of sun.
My tomatoes get a minimum of 12 hours of sun a day and it is hot today… 107 the key is proper water and and 10-10-10 fertilizer every three weeks and they produce from June till frost in October. I have been growing tomatoes for over 45 years.
I always get big fat green things that come every year I grow tomatoes and eat up every leaf and tomatoes. What do need to do to stop them
https://www.gardeningchannel.com/how-to-control-tomato-hornworms/
They are called tomato hornworms. They are caterpillars of the beautiful Sphinx moth (sometimes called hummingbird moth) You can kill them with BT spray. (Bacillus thuringensis)
You can pick them off
As soon as you see signs of leaf damage, check tomato plants for them in the evening and remove them.
I cut lots of my leaves or stems off , cause they was yellow, brown.
ALWAYS contact your agricultural extension agent — !!!!
To prevent that, you might try covering the plants with shade cloth during the hot months. You can use tulle from the fabric store or professional cloth. This will let them set fruit and mature without becoming thick-skinned from the heat and sun. They will get enough sun through the cloth, but not too much.
Can tomatoes be grown in a screen enclosed patio?
Will they still get new blossoms?
So far my plants are loaded with tomatoes, but there is a
lot of yellowing of the leaves.
Help!
if your leaves are yellowing sounds like a mineral deficiency. use Epsom salts, not too much… to replace lost calcium and magnesium. do not use anything with lime in it, tomatoes are a member of the potato family and hate lime
wrong….lime provides calcium and calcium prevents blossom end rot. You are correct about potatoes, however. They do not like lime. Also, Epsom salts will help the yellowing leaves issues as it is Magnesium but there is no calcium in Epsom salts.
Exactly right!
I am looking at my epsom salt package….calcium silicate right there in the ingredients?
YELLOWING OF THE LEAVES TOO MUCH WATER
yellowing of the leaves is a nitrogen defiency
My tomatoes in containers are starting to show signs of just a little yellow. Everyone says lime them. Can you use regular pickling lime from the kitchen? It is calcium hydroxide (lime).
Said earlier don’t use lime use Epsom salt
no…use dolomitic lime..read the package as some contain both lime and Magnesium so you won’t have to use Epsom salts on the tomato plants. Epsom salt in soil helps tomato growth by warding off the growth-sapping magnesium deficiency often found in older tomato plants. Epsom salt adds necessary magnesium to the soil so that the plant doesn’t develop problems such as yellow leaves and poor productivity
Topic was really helpfull for me….
thanks for giving good information about gardening. how i can know of tamoto veraty. where u stay.. in india or other … pleace guide me
I plant in 32 gallon old feed buckets for cattle. Also 18 gallon ones from Walmart. I plant in one year old horse manure that has had shavings in it.I plant all vegs this way. I plant catnip,basil,rosemary in each cucumber bucket. As the cucumbers get tall on their tee pees I hang clippings of these herbs higher up every other day. The tomatoes have basil and marigolds. We have clay soil and I have rototilled hundreds of pounds of aged manure in to the ground beds that grow flowers and more herbs only.I bleach my buckets each year and they have 2, 2″ holes in the bottom.We were eating cucumbers before June 1st. Have fruit on RED Husky cherry tomatoes, early Girls and Park’s Whopper,yellow squash, blossoms on bell peppers, hot peppers have buds. Dont let leaves touch the “soil” and add am coffee grounds to what ever plant is bearing the heaviest. Cover the manure with newspaper to prevent splash back. We have done this for years and we can for the winter the yield is so good. I do not take the suckers off the tomatoes as they provide shade for the fruit in our HOT HUMID GA summers
Thanks for the info!
WELCOME
You sound like my kind of gardener! I have eaten home grown fruit and veggies for 66 years now n NW Alabama, my roots. Yard gardened when n Middle Tenn n SE Virginia.
Hello this was very helpful thank you! Can you please give me a diy pesticide for tomatoes? Thanks!!
I always start with dish soap, couple of drops in a qt. spray bottle. Never spray when the sun is out. If that doesn’t work go to a bacterial soap. Failing that ID the bug/pest; take a picture .If you can’t find it on line go to your nearest nursery. They usually have a pesticide book put out by the chemical companies. These book have pictures of bugs and diseases, once you have identified the problem go to organic sites and make one for your personal pest!If you do business often enough with the nursery, maybe they will gift you the book when they get their new one. Hope this was helpful.
Lori ,what state are you in, zone?
Hi, I’m in southeast Michigan, and I’m not sure what zone that is? Possibly 5? Thank you kindly for your help. I’m only a 2nd year container gardener. This year, I’m planting tomatoes, cucumbers & red peppers. So any tips you have would be welcome!! I’m hooked on you tube & google + for help! One thing I read was Epsom salt! So I did it and wow, what a difference!! But my peppers aren’t doing to good.
Tell me what”my peppers arent doing well” means. Peppers in order to turn red means a LONG wait. That is one reason they are so expensive in the produce department. Takes a long time to turn red or yellow. What are they planted in for “soil?”
Go easy with the Epson salts, not more then once a month. Are you buying them in the health, not garden department? Obviously, not the scented ones but plain. They are the same and far cheaper. One of the great things about container plants is as the summer progresses you can move the pot so it stays in sun 6 hours a day.
Glad you are hooked on Google as one of my sons works for them!
My cucumbers and the most fruited Early Girl tomato are in the garage! We are having a 3 day event of nasty weather so the door is open and they are safe. Last year it rained so much in June my cucumbers turned to mush, vines mush. We were picking cucumbers in the garage last night and I was pollinating out there early this am. I love my cukes!
You may be in zone 5 or even 4, important to know. Having been attached to the military, living in 23 states, I have found that Google is a huge help. I ask it what varieties do best in xxx. There is lots of information!
I try to grow several varieties to carry me tho the inner summer Roma’s come in earlier ,here, then the early round tomatoes, then a late heat,humidity tolerant one for the end of summer.
5 gallon pots aren’t large enough to keep the plant from suffering stunted growth and fruit production with all but the smallest of determinate tomato types.
Granted if that’s all you have, a bunch of 5 gal. pots beats nothing. Otherwise I wouldn’t put too much thought into moving them, when the time comes you can take your unused 5 gallon buckets and transfer some soil into them from larger pots at the end of the season, which is also a good time to add some organic matter to compost until next growing season.
Why are the lower limbs/leaves turning pale then brown? 🙁
Mostly if the plant is doing well, it is plain age. If the plant looks sick; is it too wet ,to dry, needing Calcium, Epsom salts, staked, getting 6 hours of sun, are the temperatures too cold, too hot?
Mix a cup of Gypsum ,found at nurseries, this will fulfill Calcium and Sulfur requirements, also Epsom salts 1/4 cup per 5 gal. Cotainer. This will lessen blossom end rot.
Thank for the info.
I’ve been using wooden “wine half-barrels” for a few years for my tomatoes with limited success. They are about 18″ deep. I’ve been reading that a 2 foot depth is best. I thought of cutting the bottoms out of my barrels and placing them on a 6 inch deep raised bed. Would that work, or would I have drainage problems? I’d appreciate any advice.
Why dont you just plant them in the raised bed? You could use the container for flowers or herbs or any plant that you dont need or want the 2ft soil depth
I have grown tomatoes upside down in 5 Gallon buckets for the last 12 years or so. I usually plant grape or cherry and then some early girls. They do very well they hang about 5 feet off of the ground. I have had years that they grow to the ground take root and begin to grow back up. And yes during the summer months they have to be watered daily. I use Pro Mix for the growing medium and fertilize as needed..
Why wouldn’t you want fungi in your soil? http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/are-fungi-earths-natural-internet
Thank you all.this is gonna be my 1st yr doing a container garden .im just doing tomatoes in NJ.for.our wonderful Jersey tomatoes Thanks again next yr maybe I.will.try more.things just getting my get wet.This site has given me so many tips and.a lot.of help especially for.someone.with.a black.thumb
I can’t wait for Spring
I am need ew to container growing. I have a tomato plant that keep producing flowers but no tomatoes. Whatcam I not doing? Any suggestions? Thank You.
Are the flowers getting pollinated?
Mt leaves on several of my plats keep curling. They get plenty of light and water. Any ides?
I had one plant do this. I separated it from the others. I believe it had a pest, can u find any tiny green or black bugs on the leaves? They might look like tiny specs of green or black. I just washed the leaves off with water and its doing better. Maybe try that. Just water is sometimes enough to get rid of the pests. Also u can add dish soap to the water and use a spray bottle to wash the leaves off.
I have two tomato plants in containers side by side and one is full of tomatoes an d the other is healthy but blooms do not mature What am I doing wrong
I live in Las Vegas. Summer is here, temp105. I need to plant in container. There are several sunny locations and a patio facing North. I want to plant celebrity tomatoes. Is it okay to start now?
Yes but you’d have to watch the forecast and bring it indoors or in a garage or cover them with paper or straw or a sheet if temps go below 50.
I bought some pelletized gypsum to add to my 5gal fabric pots of tomatoes. I’m having trouble figuring out how much to add and how often. The tomatoes are already planted in the pots. I have 15 pots. I’m also trying to grow cucumbers and basil. I’m unsure if I should add any to those pots. The cukes are in 5gal fabric pots the basil is in slightly smaller plastic pots. I would appreciate any tips thank you