How To Grow Great Tomatoes In Containers - Expertplantman

So its tomato growing time of the year And in today's blog we will see how to grow great tomatoes in containers So if you've been growing tomatoes in containers, you know there can be a lot of issues to deal with In today's blog we will see how to deal with some of these issues And we will see two varieties of tomatoes today The first one is the Heinz Super Roma Tomato And the other variety we will be seeing is The Ace 55 Hybrid Tomato A nice determinate variety of tomato And that brings us to

Our First Tip

Grow determinate varieties in containers When growing in containers you're restricted with size So make sure you choose determinate varieties which don't grow like crazy And still produce a lot of tomatoes And do well with minimal staking When choosing the soil to use for your tomato plants Use a Potting Mix and not Potting Soil Potting Mixes are usually more expensive but they are well worth the money Because they contain good ingredients that your tomato plants will love So do not use potting soil, using potting mixes Even determinate plants need staking So make sure you stake your tomato plants very well You can use tomato cages, re-bars, garden stakes, twines Just make sure they are staked One of the most common complaints of growing tomatoes in containers Is that they get  Blossom End Rot or BER And I'm going to tell you how to fix this very easily The reason why tomatoes get BER is because of lack of Calcium and irregular watering So make sure you enrich the soil with Gypsum which is Garden Lime And add a little bit of peat moss to neutralize the Lime Gypsum or Garden Lime contains Calcium And also make sure you keep your tomato plant well watered using a drip irrigation system When using fertilizers remember that when your plants are young You need more leaves and foliage So make sure you use a high Nitrogen or a balanced fertilizer so that you get good growth and a good start for your tomato plants As the plant grows and starts producing flowers You need to stop giving high Nitrogen fertilizers to your tomato plants And start using a low Nitrogen, High phosphorus, potassium fertilizer And also make sure you keep adding Calcium using Garden Lime or Tomato fertilizers that contain Calcium You do not want to use a high Nitrogen fertilizer when the plant is flowering This is a common mistake To make sure you get the maximum yield from your tomato plants,

You need to make sure that each and every flower gets converted into tomato Well if not all at least most of them And as you can see we have a lot of tomatoes on this plant in this container And that's because we have hand-pollinated these tomato plants I have explained how to hand pollinate tomato plants in another blog So be sure to check out the link that you see on your screen And that goes over the process in detail One of the reasons you need to hand pollinate tomatoes is because the bee population is constantly decreasing And even if you have a lot of bees in your area, hand-pollinating assures many more tomatoes! While your tomato plant is growing well, make sure you add some Epsom salt in water and bathe your tomato plants You can also add some Aspirin in water and water your tomato plants Aspirin is known to control a lot of diseases - usually fungal diseases that a tomato plant could have. So it does do a good job The Epsom salt is going to add Magnesium and Sulfate And that's a great food for your tomato plants You do not need to use any insecticide on your tomato plants till you see any problems But when you do see insects we come to our next

Tip 

Make sure you use either Neem Oil or Spinosad, which are organic insecticides to control insects on your tomato plants When you see pests on your tomato plants you need to spray them at least every 3 weeks if not,  about a month Or you can do it whenever you see insects on your tomato plants And as you can see by following some simple

Tips 

You can grow a lot of tomatoes in small spaces and containers So let's go ahead and harvest some tomatoes from this container Now from this 5 or 6-gallon container that the tomato plant is growing in, you can expect to get a lot of tomatoes And if you're not getting enough tomatoes, make sure you follow all

Tips 

In this Blog properly and then give it a shot! When harvesting tomatoes, it's best to let them ripen on the vine They just taste a lot better that way If the tomato is partially ripe it will still ripen at room temperatures This one is the Heinz tomato And let's harvest another one - this is the Ace 55 tomato So that's how your tomatoes should look like - clear skin, nice tomatoes, no Blossom End Rot

And if you follow the tips in this Blog correctly, I am sure you'll be on your way to growing great tomatoes in your containers So I wanted to show you how one of these tomatoes looks like This is the Heinz tomato - yes the same company that makes the ketchup Not sure why its called Heinz, probably a good tomato for making paste and ketchup And let's cut it open So that tomato looks pretty good And you can use it for almost anything you can think of - sandwiches, paste, ketchup, almost anything So I'll see you soon again in another episode of California Gardening Until then...Happy Gardening!