How to Grow TOMATOES in Pots || Black Gumbo

hey there welcome to Black gumbo Southern gardening I'm glad you stopped by let's learn about how to grow tomato plants in [Music] pots okay everybody loves a good Vine ripened tomato these are some I bought from the store they are actually quite delicious they're called Campari tomatoes and these are greenhouse grown tomatoes and they're actually quite delicious but they don't they don't compare to a tomato plant that you grow your own uh by yourself that you grow yourself in uh either a garden or in a pot and so there's nothing like that fresh tomato taste so I'm going to step you through all the different uh steps of how to grow tomatoes in a pot in case you don't have a big Garden or you're just starting out or you just live in an apartment you want to grow some tomatoes on your balcony uh let's learn how let's talk about the benefits of growing your own Tomatoes number one is you can grow all kinds of variet ities I've got here a black crem couple Aromas a thorb burs terracotta I've got a white tomato if you ever seen a white tomato a white cherry tomato from seeds for Generations got some Romas from seeds uh seeds for Generations by the way if you want to support our Channel go buy seeds at my link seeds for Generations great family business anyway you could grow all kinds of varieties and you can find your favorites you can grow varieties that are custom tailored and breed to work in your area right here in Zone 9B um it gets hot so I have to choose varieties that grow in my heat and that's an important factor when you're deciding to grow tomatoes is when do you start them well typically you start them in the spring and they grow until in my area until it gets hot in the summer now if you live more north of me in some of the uh Northern zones you probably can grow tomatoes all through the summer but here I've got to get my tomatoes out in Spring tomato plants only uh ju as a rule tomato plants will will be uh viable in temperatures that are um from about H 70 75 degrees at night if it's hotter than that at night then the pollen's not going to necessarily be viable and during the days if it's over about 90° Fahrenheit during the day the pollen's not going to be as good as viable so you want that window um in the springtime when your pollen will be viable uh some Tomatoes obviously Buck the system and and do fine if you live in cold areas want to get tomatoes that are a little more cold hearty and a lot of those have to do they have Russian names or they come from Crimean stock you know the black Crim that's a Crimean tomato that does better North it doesn't do well here um down here in the South more varieties like Everglades or carbon or Juliet they do well here so you want to look on your seed packets and make sure you're getting a variety that can tolerate the heat if you live in the subtropics like me or it's more of a temperate variety if you live up North so that's the first thing temperature and uh make sure you're planting at the right time don't start tomatoes in the middle of summer they're probably not going to do well and uh if you live up north don't don't try to grow them over the winter Outdoors um what we're talking about growing in pots uh what do we what do we want to get in terms of a pot will something like this work I think it will let's talk about sizes now I'll be growing tomatoes in these pots I've grown tomatoes in these pots before these are about oh they hold about 10 15 gallons of soil this is a number seven tall Nursery pot I'm going to grow in this one this is about equal to a five gallon bucket this is the smallest I would go for tomatoes uh unless I've got a miniature or dwarfing variety because the more soil you have the more success you're going to have with your plant think about this your tomato plants like these here they're going to get really tall especially if they're indeterminate varieties they will grow much taller than you if you allow them and you're going to need to put some sort of a support like this tomato cage in your pot this is filled with tomato plant trust me these things will tump over and they'll fall over in high wind so the bigger the pot and the more soil you have the more stable your plant's going to be and it gives it uh more opportunity for root growth so the smallest I would go as a rule of thumb is a 5 gallon bucket no smaller unless you have a dwarfing variety so I've got this number seven Nursery pot it's 5 gallons let's fill it up let's talk about what kind of soil to use it's very important important when you grow plants in pots to have a potting mix buy a soil bag that says potting mix or potting soil buy something specifically for growing in containers the reason is you don't want to use like dirt from your garden you don't want to use top soil uh you don't want to use stuff that's dense because you want this to drain well you don't want water pooling up and gathering around the roots of your plant your plant's roots are going to rot so you want this stuff that has a lot of organic M material in it that drains well and I did an experiment in a previous video to show how that drainage works and uh let's do that let's do that experiment again here are two containers this one is filled with top soil straight out of a bag this one is filled with the potting soil that we're going to use also straight out of a bag potting soil specifically made for containers top soil really just useful for filling low spots in your yard and I'm going to pour some water into both of these move Phoebe and see how quickly the water drains you can see that the top soil is draining but not real quick but you can see that the potting soil the potting mix drains pretty quickly this holds on to water it's dense it's hard it's heavy it's like cement you can see sand coming out the bottom yeah you don't want that in your uh container this is just going to hold on to water and it's not going to let any air circulate in that soil while this is co and it drains quickly see there's no sand coming out there's no silk this is very fine it's going to choke your roots this is nice and well it's nice and perfect for pots yeah that's heavy man it's like a block concrete so I'm just going to get into my bag of potting mix and just simply fill up my pot like I said The more soil you have in your pot the happier your tomato plant will be all right we have our potting soil I'm just going to put potting soil right into my bucket here some folks put rocks down in the bottom if you want to kind of keep the holes from plugging up but I find they don't plug up so let's just fill it up it's another important fact uh it's another important factor your bucket or your container needs to have drainage holes if it doesn't have drainage holes drill some in there drill them down near the bottom and if your container's going to sit on concrete and it's a flat bottom container it's often good to put holes on the sides down near the bottom so that that water will drain now I'm going to fill this up but I'm going to leave a few inches near the top available for mulching later I want to be able to mulch my pot mulch helps keep moisture in but not so much moisture that your plants are getting water logged but it does help suppress weed growth as well there we go leave about 3 4 in there we go all right let's go back to the patio where it's nicer when purchasing your tomato plant starts don't buy the big giant plants that already have fruit on them this needs to be in a pot this is much too large for this little cup and it's laggy long this needs to go in the ground really quick now this is a healthy plant it's not you know it's starting to show signs of stress but when you're buying them at the store you don't want to buy the one a lot of people think wow that one's already got fruit on it let's buy it the reason it has fruit on it is it's stressed and it's trying to complete its life cycle of reproduction of making seeds before it dies um try to get the smaller plants if they don't have blossoms if they don't have these little blossoms on them even better uh get them when they're small and young and when they're uh healthy looking and little that's the best time to get them they're not stressed they're happy little plants and when you put them in the garden they'll take off when you put them in a bigger pot they're going to really take off uh these guys when you stick them in a pot and they're big like this they're just going to sigh a sigh of relief and maybe even just take a little bit of a break they're going to focus on root growth and not so much top growth for a while it's okay if this is all you can get or if you're late getting your seed starts out that's fine you know work with what you got this is going to be a good tomato plant at some point but you'll have a better start and a healthier chance for Success if you get the smaller plants the smaller little happy plants by those all right we have our pot filled nearly nearly to the top we have our tomato start this is one that I grew from seed but you can certainly go to the Garden Center wherever you buy your starch and you can buy these plants and they kind of look about like that they come in a little pot about that size this tomato plant really needs to get in the ground it's looking a little bit light green and that's not what you want with a tomato you want a tomato plant to be dark green if it's dark green it's happy if a plant starts turning light green or yellow it needs fertilizer I'm going to pinch off these lower um these lower leaves branches and we're going to plant this a little deep this happens to be my single seed challenge it is a Isis candy it is it was planted as one Single Seed in this pot oh I guess a month and a half two months ago this is my single seed challenge look at it yeah if you're not familiar with the Single Seed challenge uh Single Seed challenge uh check check the link and participate it's fun it's a good way to appreciate plants and and to appreciate the gardening Community all you have to do is dig a hole in your soil big enough for your tomato root ball that is it but I'm going to dig a little bit deeper because I want this tomato plant to grow roots along the stem if you plant a tomato deeper you have potential for more root growth where all these little hairs are on the stem and that's just one of the neat things about tomatoes is they just want to grow for you they're not hard also if you wanted to you could amend this soil with a slow release fertilizer I like IV Organics I also like Dr Earth I IV Organics is a low do 333 allpurpose fertilizer and you can put some of that in the hole and I think I'm going to do that if you want to support our Channel even more and you want a good deal go over to IV organics.com and enter the code gumbo 10 that's my code you'll be helping our Channel but you'll also get a 10% discount on anything you buy there and Charles over at IV Organics a great guy great company they sell some great products including this allpurpose fertilizer any fertilizer that you get for tomatoes if you want to optimize it you want that middle number to be about a four like a like a 2 42 or a 142 so put you some little fertilizer down in there and kind of mix it in and then what we're going to do is just pop our plant out keep your label you want your label to always be nearby just pop your plant out and drop it in the hole there we go look at the roots not quite root bound but a good root system we're going to drop that in there and just cover up up that stem a bit and friends that's all there is to planting a tomato now we want to water this in real well now about watering you want to water these plants almost daily when it's really hot you want to make sure that the soil doesn't dry out and you can test that by sticking your finger down in that soil and seeing if it's cool down beneath the surface and if it is you're probably okay but I find when it gets hot like in the Summers I have to water a plant this size a pot this size every single day to keep it hydrated and then what I'll do in terms of fertilization is uh once a week I'll put a very small amount of liquid fish fertilizer in my water so that I'll irrigate and it's called fertig ation when you fertilize when you irrigate and I'll do that once a week for my potted plants and my inground plants but a potted plant needs the fertilizer that you give it because it's dependent on you once it uses up all the nutrition in this soil that's it it can't range further out it can't go forg for nutrients in the soil it can't send its roots any further than this pot so this little plant is dependent on you for its uh for its nutrition so watch the plant make sure that your plant is dark green if it's not dark green give a little bit of a well balanced liquid liquid fertilizer once you have your tomato in a pot put it somewhere where it's going to get as much sun as possible tomato plants Love full sun absolutely they love full sun I'm going to drop this one right here for now and that's full sun now once your tomato plant begins to get larger you're going to have to prune it if it's an indeter variety now you can always know if it's a determinant or indeterminate variety if you Google your variety name and you will find the information on your variety and whether it's in the pot or whether it's in the ground like this one here this is a harvest moon variety um you're going to need to take care of pruning I have a video on how to prune these tomatoes and this is the one I used as an example you want to keep the U leaves from touching the soil and you want to keep it at a height where it's not going to to topple over other than that there's a lot of Liberty in how you can prune your Tomatoes you can do single Vine you can double Vine you can let them sprawl uh this one's getting in need of a haircut again but uh we'll leave that for another video but yeah once you get your tomatoes to the height you want them you want to top them just give them a haircut just stop the growth there and um some people like to say that when they're small you want to pinch the flowers so that they'll grow more buds you know later on put their energy into growing a plant that has more structure for more flowers yeah I don't do any of that I just let the tomatoes grow they want to grow for you they're easy to grow now they're also easy to get diseased and they attract lots of pests so be vigilant with your tomato plants if you're growing out on a patio or something come and visit your plant every day look at it make sure there's no leaves that are looking weird like this one's got a hole in it like something was eating on it uh you want to make sure there's there's a a healthy plant and if there's not a healthy plant get online and Google your symptoms and treat your plant but yeah Tomatoes I've even even see some fruit coming in on that plant over there wow exciting one of the most exciting plants you can grow it's The Gardener's favorite worldwide and uh yeah you can grow them in these pots get you a tomato plant hey thanks for joining me on black gumbo Southern Garden if you have any tomato questions please drop a question down below and I'll try to answer you I read all the comments um and your question might even make it to a gardening question and answer episode if uh if if I know the answer so hey thanks for joining me on black gumbo Southern gardening there it is pretty easy to grow tomatoes and pots we'll talk to you next time bye-bye [Music]

Channel: Scott Head

Views: 122,368

Keywords: Gardening, Vegetables, Texas Gardening, Zone 9a, Black Gumbo, IV Organics

Id: KCB625FX-5Q

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024