How to Grow Tomatoes in a Container

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Stan DeFrietas, Mr. Green Thumb. We're at Willow Tree Nursery in St. Petersburg, Florida. I get a lot of question from folks about how to grow tomatoes in containers. You can grow in almost any container. Now this happens to be just a one gallon pot, which every nursery has. It'd be suitable for maybe a cherry tomato, or a sweet one hundred. If you want to grow larger tomatoes, you're going to have to go to larger containers. Sometimes use whiskey barrels, sometimes people use earth boxes, there's all kinds of containers that've been developed. But remember, you've gotta have a good soil. So one of the first things you have to do is make sure you've got a good friable soil. It has to have a good amount of Peet, maybe some pearlite, some organic material, in your soil. The container's important. Make sure it has good drainage. Every container will have some kind of drainage spout in the bottom of the container. If it doesn't drain, the roots get too much water, and unless you're growing hydroponically you can have sometimes a problem. Remember that air through the soil's important, just like water, minerals and nutrients. In a container, you've gotta make sure that you incorporate some organic material like the Black Cow cow manure or Peet moss. But you also want to add, also incorporate some fertilizer. I'd use a tomato fertilizer in this container at the time that I started thee planting. And make sure that you continue with your fertilizer on a regular basis. Containers, tomatoes...go great. You can always bring your tomato in during a cool time and protect your plant. If it's in a traditional garden, well, you've got a problem. You've got to cover the plant over. Containers make tomatoes easy to grow. I'm Stan DeFreitas for askmrgreenthumb.com."