7 Best Tomatoes to Grow in Containers

welcome to Next Level gardening I'm Brian if this is your first time here and you're looking for a online gardening community that offers tips tricks and support to help take your garden to the next level you're in the right place if you've been here before welcome back well technically you can grow all tomatoes in a pot uh some are a little bit better at it than others I'm going to give you my picks as far as what I think are the best tomatoes for several different pot sizes but I'd like to hear from you in the comments if you grow tomatoes and containers and have some that you'd like to share as some of your best offerings please put them in the comments below the first thing you have to consider is the size of pot you're going to be using now there are tomatoes that will do well in a small one gallon pot others might need a two and a half gallon pot and still others might need a five gallon pot just remember the smaller the pot the more it's going to need to be watered and just because in theory there is a tomato that will thrive in a one gallon pot it will only do so with consistent moisture so let's start off with some of the one gallon pot size tomato plants the first one is micro Tom and it's probably the smallest tomato plant I've ever seen it only grows to about six to eight inches in height but even in a gallon sized pot it can produce 30 to 50 Tomatoes they're smaller cherries sized Tomatoes but 30 to 50 of them per plant so if you have a small space this could be a really great option for just simply the amount of space it doesn't take up now the next one is tumbler and it can take up zero ground real estate State because this is a great one for a hanging basket so if you have just a regular hanging basket for any type of hanging plant you can plant three of these in there and they will be really productive and the fruit is not small it's like two inch diameter fruits so moving up a bit in size to like the two to three gallon size pot my first choice for that would be patio princess now that's going to be about a foot and a half to two feet tall and it produces a bunch of two to two and a half inch in diameter tomatoes so we've talked about three smaller Tomatoes now is it possible to grow kind of a beef steak tomato in a pot this size you can with bush steak Bush steak is a bush beef steak type tomato the plant gets about two feet tall but it's going to produce fruits that are half pound or larger and something like this sweetheart of the patio is another smaller cherry tomato type plant it is a semi-determinate so that can also be good for a hanging basket it doesn't just grow a bush it does have some trailing to it but not the kind that just goes and goes forever the fruits are about one inch in diameter and the plant is actually blight resistant so if you live in a hot humid area where you get lots of blight this could be a good choice for you now moving up the pot size into a 12 inch diameter or a five gallon pot we've all heard of this one the roma tomato great tomato for sauce super productive really productive even growing it in a pot doesn't really take away from its productivity another great thing about roma tomato plants is they're resistant to verticillium wilt and fusarium Wilt Glacier is a really good compact plant that produces tons of one to two inch diameter fruits and as the name suggests they do well in cooler climates now out of my two favorite Tomatoes I have had good luck with one of them growing in a container and not so great luck with the other Kellogg's breakfast which is my all-time favorite large tomato it I have not had good luck with it in pots let me know in the comments if you've grown it on pot and it worked well for you and then give me your secret Sun gold on the other hand I grew in a pot last year and it was amazing It produced hundreds of tomatoes all year long in fact it only stopped producing last month when the hail and the cold weather just took it out completely and a lot of tomatoes when the weather gets cold the the texture and the taste of the Tomato isn't there with sun gold it was almost sweeter in December than it was in June now if you have 10 to 15 gallon pots you can almost try growing any type of tomato in those they're just a really big size for a big root system even for indeterminate tomato plants now I'm going to get into this a little in just a second but we need to make sure you know the difference between indeterminate and determinate now determinate plants like Aroma like a lot of these we've talked about they are a bush type of tomato they grow to a certain size produce their fruit and then they're they're finished a indeterminate tomato it's the Vining type of tomato it grows and grows and grows and produces and produces and produces until the winter weather comes and kills it and then cherry tomatoes are somewhere in between they can be a little more on the bush side they can be a little more on the indeterminate Vining side it just depends on the variety now I did a video last year on specifically growing tomatoes in containers so I'm going to link that video down below I'll link it right up here and any of these that pop up here you can click it it will open it in a new window so you don't forget to go back but you can still keep watching this one I do want to highlight just a few of the points that I made in that video but I suggest you watch it because it's probably going to make more sense seeing the whole thing together so first of all growing in containers growing anything in containers you're going to have to deal with watering and fertilizing a little bit differently than you would in the ground or in raised beds they are completely dependent on the wall water in that pot and for you to give it to them they can't put their Roots out and go looking for it so they need to be checked especially in these height of Summer daily and you put your finger in two inches into the soil and if you feel moisture they're good if you don't feel moisture you need to water them fertilizer leeches much more quickly out of containers than it does out of the ground or raised beds and so you really need to be on top of fertilizing them the best way is half strength every single week the second best way to do it is full strength every two weeks as far as staking your Tomatoes or supporting them it's a little harder in a pot than it is in the ground so on that video I show you a few different ways so for the determinate types I take a tomato cage you want to get a strong one some of them are so flimsy they fall apart before you get them to the car get a strong one turn it upside down put the round ring the biggest round ring in the pot and then take a zip tie and zip the points together on the top now you've got a sturdy base for that to start to grow through and you can tie it into that to that tomato cage as it grows so that's for a determinant or a bush type now if you have a cherry type of tomato you might need something a little bit taller so just get two of those strong tomato cages and the first one goes upside down like like we did put the next one right side up and feed those legs down into it and zip tie them to that first tomato cage now you've got something that's a little taller to be able to support a little bit more of that viney growth now for an indeterminate tomato and for indeterminants I prune mine to a single stem I did a video just last week on growing more tomatoes in less space I will link that down below and up here and that is by using the Tomato hooks now to do that in a container it's not that difficult you just need four bamboo canes branches small pieces of wood about five feet tall four feet tall five feet is best I think make them into a teepee so hook them together at the top zip ties in my experience don't work well for this because they still allow it to be too loose so I take some wire and I run it through all the sticks and then Bunch them all together then you take a landscape staple put it in the ground at the base of the Tomato tie the string to it run the string up to the top of that teepee where you will hook the hook onto that wire and then every time your plant reaches the top of that TP you just unhook the hook let out a little bit of string and hook it back and it will keep growing and keep growing until your cold weather comes to kill it watching that whole video is going to make a lot more sense than just the Snippets I took out I just wanted to give you some highlights I also go over fertilizing what I use and how I do it and everything so just go watch that video but I hope this video has given you some good ideas about growing tomatoes and containers if it has please please consider giving the video a thumbs up subscribe if you haven't already share it with a gardening friend and I'll see you next time

Channel: Next Level Gardening

Views: 87,457

Keywords: best tomatoes to grow in pots, best tomatoes to grow in containers, how to grow tomatoes in pots, how to grow tomatoes in pots at home, how to grow tomatoes at home in small pots, how to grow big tomatoes in pots, how to grow cherry tomatoes in pots, how to grow tomatoes at home, how to grow tomatoes, next level gardening, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, patio tomatoes, small space tomatoes, tomatoes for a small garden

Id: v1OB7udlbC8

Length: 9min 18sec (558 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 26 2023