Container Gardening

So, you’ve decided to try growing tomatoes in containers.  You’ve chosen your containers, planted your tomatoes and watched them grow.  Everything has been going great!

Then, one morning, you go out to check on them, and something isn’t right.  Maybe the leaves are off-color.  Maybe the fruit looks wrong.  One way or another, your tomato has gotten sick.  What do you do?  Here are three common problems with potted tomato plants that affect the fruit and how to prevent or deal with them.

1. Blossom-end rot

Blossom-end rot is exactly what it sounds like: the tomato begins to rot from the place where the blossom attached.  It is caused by low levels of calcium in the plant.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure here.  The best way to keep blossom-end rot away from your plants is to keep calcium levels high.

You can start your plants off well by crushing some eggshells in the soil before planting your seedlings.  Fertilize with a non-ammoniacal nitrogen fertilizer, and make sure you are watering regularly and your pots have good drainage.  DO NOT OVER-FERTILIZE.

If you already have blossom-end rot, try to stabilize your plant’s moisture as much as possible.  It’s a good idea to pick and throw out affected fruit as soon as you notice to reduce strain on the plant.

2. Sunscald

If your underripe tomatoes are getting hard, white or light-colored patches on them, they may have sunscald.  These patches will eventually blister and sink in.

Sunscald is caused by too much direct sunlight on the fruit.  Tomatoes are very leafy plants, and those leaves serve two purposes: they soak up a lot of light for energy, and they shade the more delicate fruit.

To prevent sunscald, try to keep your tomato plants lush and thick.  If you prune them, make sure all your fruits remain shaded when you are finished.  If something else causes your plant to lose leaves, you can protect your fruit with light screens.

3. Growth Cracks

When a tomato grows too fast, the skin can’t always keep up.  When this happens, you see cracking.  There are three kinds of growth cracks.

• Radial cracks: These cracks start at the stem of the tomato and reach outward.
• Concentric cracks: These cracks make circles around the stem, never touching it.
• Russeting: In russeting, tiny cracks form and scar all over the tomato, giving the fruit a rough appearance.

Growth cracks almost always result from a dry period followed by a very wet period, where the tomatoes work to make up growth.  To avoid cracking, make sure your tomatoes have a consistent, steady water supply.  Regular fertilization will also help.

Note: If your pots are too small, they may have a hard time holding enough water.  Consider moving to larger pots if cracking is a regular problem in your container tomatoes.

Tomatoes are one of the most rewarding vegetables to grow in a home garden. The difference between store-bought and home-grown tomatoes is dramatic, and truly fresh tomatoes add to any dish. Tomatoes are not terribly hard to grow, and can fit into most people’s budgets and landscapes with just a little bit of effort.

Here are ten tips for growing fantastic high-yield tomatoes.

1. Give them plenty of SUNLIGHT
Tomatoes LOVE light.  Find the sunniest spot in your yard to place your tomatoes. You want a MINIMUM of 6 hours of sunlight a day: the more, the better. Check your yard carefully, tracking the amount of sunlight each area is getting, before choosing the best place.

Tip: If you are growing tomatoes in containers, sometimes a few feet of height will make a big difference in sunlight. Consider piling cinderblocks or putting your pots on a wall until the plants have reached 2-3 feet tall. They may get an extra hour of sunlight a day that way.

2. WATER them heavily
With so much sunlight, soil will dry out quickly. Tomatoes are thirsty plants, which is how the fruit gets so juicy. Tomatoes which are planted in the ground need up to 2 inches of water a week. Tomatoes in containers often need more, since the roots are more compact. Make sure you are watering every single day! If you miss days and then overwater later to compensate, your tomatoes will crack open or develop blossom end rot. Water the soil, not the leaves.

3. Condition your SOIL
Tomatoes prefer slightly acidic soil. You can get soil test kits at your local garden center. You are looking for a pH between 6.2 and 6.8. If your soil is too acidic (pH below 6.2), you can add agricultural lime to raise the pH. If your soil is too alkaline (pH above 6.8), you can add sulfur to lower the pH. Remember to fertilize regularly, too: plants don’t just need dirt, they need the nutrients in the dirt. Compost or commercial fertilizers provide those nutrients.

4. Crush EGGSHELLS into your soil
Calcium helps tomatoes make fruit! To add calcium to your soil, crush a few eggshells and sprinkle them into the soil. If you are planting from seedlings, you can put the shells directly into the hole you’re making for the seedling. This will help give you round, even fruits.

5. Stake or CAGE the tomatoes
Tomatoes are heavy. When the fruit starts to come in, tomato plants will begin to bend and sag under the weight. You don’t want to let your tomatoes touch the ground, because that can encourage rot, disease, and insect damage. To keep this from happening, place a cage around your tomatoes. The bars will help support tomato stalks. If branches begin to get too long, you can tie them up or prune them off. Don’t let your tomatoes waste their energy! Put the cages in while tomatoes are seedlings, so they grow around the cages.

6. Give the tomatoes lots of HEAT
Tomatoes LOVE being hot. Any way you can raise the temperature of the soil will help them to thrive. In you can, put black plastic on the soil a few weeks before you plant, to prepare it for the tomatoes. Wait to mulch until temperatures are higher, since mulch can cool the soil. For container gardening, dark-colored containers will make warmer soil.

7. PRUNE regularly and thoughtfully
You don’t want to prune your tomato plants too heavily, or they won’t grow full and lush. However, you want to be certain your tomatoes aren’t wasting effort. Determinate tomato varieties need no pruning, but indeterminate tomatoes can benefit from pruning away the wasted branches. There are two major ways to prune tomatoes:

• Trim branches that reach too far beyond the cages.  If the cage doesn’t offer support, these branches will start to sag and break.  Even if they already have fruit or flowers forming, it is best to trim these away early.  They’ll do no good if they snap before the tomatoes are ripe.  Don’t let your tomatoes waste effort!
  

  Tomato Suckers

• Trim away tomato suckers.  Tomato suckers are the little leaves and stems that grow at the joint between tomato stems.  If you let tomato suckers grow, they will form new branches.  Eventually, these branches will flower and fruit, but the fruit will be small.  Thick plants are good, but don’t let them get TOO thick.  Pruning away most (not all) tomato suckers will let your plants focus on big, healthy plants, and allow sunlight to reach inner leaves.

With these tips, you will wind up with healthier,  tastier tomatoes, with higher yield.  Enjoy!

I like container gardening with vegetables because it makes me feel more productive than just growing flowers.  I’m not just spending time in the yard working with dirt, I’m building groceries!  It makes me feel virtuous to be able to put a dollar value on my effort.

Just because I’m growing something usable, however, doesn’t mean I can’t make it beautiful, too.  How do you go about making your container garden beautiful?  Here are five tips for growing a beautiful container garden.

1. Pick attractive plants

Chives In Bloom

It may seem obvious, but plant selection is the first step to getting an attractive container garden.  Look for pictures of your chosen plants to see what they’ll look like at various stages.  If the look of wire cages turns you off, choose tomatoes that don’t need cage growing.  If the jumble of vines from a bush bean plant doesn’t appeal to you, don’t grow them!

On the other side, feel free to choose some plants primarily for their ornamental value.  I grow more chives than I need because they’re pretty, with the vertical stalks and fun purple flowers.  Many herbs have variegated varieties, with pretty stripes of color in the leaves.  Summer squash plants have really pretty flowers in the morning, and cherry tomatoes are absolutely beautiful when they reach maturity, with clusters of little fruits.

2. Pick attractive containers

This step can be trickier, since containers almost always cost more than your plants, and if you are working on a budget, the bland pots may be the most practical.  If you can afford dozens of beautiful ceramic pots, go for it!  If not, try accenting the garden with one or two focal pieces.  Start with small pots, placed prominently.  Select plastic containers in neutral colors for the rest of your plants, and the decorative pots will jump out.  Every year, replace a few plastic pots with more decorative containers.

3. Use different sizes and shapes

A row of identical 5-gallon pots of tomato plants is bound to be a bit dull.  Instead, choose plants with different sizes of pots, stems, and leaves, and place them near each other.  A tall tomato plant might be complemented by a shallow bowl of herbs or a windowbox of lettuce.  This keeps the garden interesting

This works particularly well if the smaller plants have particularly interesting colors, such as red cabbages or variegated herbs.  Just make sure to place the larger plants as background and the smaller ones as foreground, or you will lose the little ones.

4. Use different heights

If you place everything on the ground, the little plants will be more or less lost in the sea of pots, and the pots themselves will be much more prominent.  Instead, try to arrange some tiers or levels on which you can place plants.

There are a few ways to do this.  My container garden is arranged near the door to my sunroom, so I use the steps that are already there, placing larger containers on the steps and a windowbox on the wide railing.  You can also build inexpensive shelves with cinderblocks and simple wooden boards.  A low table can be a platform for a pot or bowl.

Don’t be afraid to hang things!  Hanging baskets of cherry tomatoes or herbs can add height and fill in empty spaces in a container garden.

5. Plant multiple items in a single pot

There are two reasons for planting more than one item in a single pot.

One is that many plants take a long time to reach maturity.  If you know your tomato plant will be two months in reaching its full height and don’t want to waste that 5-gallon pot in the meantime, you can plant some plants with quick crops, like radishes or carrots, to fill out the container in the meantime.  Full pots are much more attractive than empty ones.

Multiple Herbs in a Planter

The other reason is that the assortment of different plants in a planter makes it more interesting to look at.  When a single pot contains four or five types of leaves or flowers, it holds the eye better.  Try planting a few kinds of lettuce or squash in one container, or grouping herbs for contrasts.  Plant chives with basil and thyme to create three levels of herbs in a single pot.

Just because your garden is functional doesn’t mean it can’t also be beautiful.  Good luck!