(inspiring acoustic guitar music)
- Welcome back to "Jacques in the Garden"
and in today's video,
we're going to be talking about something
very exciting to me, that is tomatoes.
I absolutely love tomato season.
Just the smell of tomatoes leaves themselves,
get me amped for the summer.
But today's topic is actually going to be
growing tomatoes in containers.
So we're gonna be talking a little bit about
all the aspects involved
with growing tomatoes in containers.
And the first one we really need to address
is variety of selection.
So in this case, what you see before me
are a few different varieties of tomatoes.
And you might be noticing
that there's a difference between some of them.
And I'm gonna talk about that right now.
So if you haven't heard about this variety before,
or not really variety, it's more of a type of tomato.
It's called a dwarf tomato.
So let's pull one up and take a look.
So the anatomy of a dwarf tomato
is that it grows much shorter than regular tomatoes.
So you could see that the stalks on the tomatoes themselves
are very kind of stocky.
They're very large and thicker.
And the spacing between each leaf node
is something like maybe an inch or two,
instead of something similar to three to six inches
on a standard tomato.
So there's a few important things about that.
The first one is that a dwarf tomato
will actually max out at a three to five foot height.
So a classic indeterminate tomato
like a Sungold or a Brandywine,
those could easily hit 8, 10, 12, 15 foot lamp vines
and it can be very, very difficult
and challenging to restrain.
So when you're growing something like that,
having a nice tall trellis like this is the ideal solution
because it gives you much more vertical height
to deal with that.
But when you're growing in a container
it could be kind of challenging to provide it
the proper support that it needs.
And some of you might be only limited to container growing.
So if you are,
you might wanna go pick up some dwarf tomato seeds.
I'm going to be including a few links to these guys,
a couple different options.
I have six different kinds here.
And one thing I'm just gonna talk a little bit
about the dwarf tomatoes themselves is,
the cool thing about it is that a couple years ago
there really weren't that many varieties whatsoever.
Nowadays there's well over a hundred types of tomatoes
in the dwarf family.
And the really neat thing about it
is that they've started breeding varieties
like the Rosella Purple,
which is an equivalent to a Cherokee Purple.
So you get the same flavor
and nice big beefsteak tomato
that you would from a Cherokee Purple
but now you only have a three to five foot plant,
so it's fantastic for containers.
I'm actually just thinking in general
they're fantastic to grow anywhere
cause they're so much easier to contain.
The other thing that's neat about them,
is they have a lot more foliage or leaves
to their fruit ratio.
And what that means is that
you have a lot more protection for your tomatoes
from getting sun scaled.
The more leaves you have the more sort of sugars
and flavors you could start producing
or the plant itself could produce.
So you have a very high potential for delicious tomatoes.
Now this one over here,
you could see it's the exact same four cell three inch tray
but this one's about twice as tall as this one here.
So this one here is a Sungold tomato.
Like I mentioned, a classic determinant
and this is a Uluru Ochre dwarf tomato.
And you could see right off the bat,
these were all started at the exact same time
but this is literally twice as tall.
The other thing you may notice
is that the space between each leaf node
is about double what it is on here.
And that's an inherent feature of the dwarf tomato,
it's just not gonna grow as fast,
it's not gonna grow as tall,
and in this case that's exactly what we want for containers.
So with that out of the way
let's go talk about different container options
and how to actually prepare your soil
for planting these delicious tomatoes.
Before we get into soil types, soil mixtures,
I'm actually gonna show you guys
how I personally blend my soil for tomatoes.
Let's talk a little bit about containers.
That's because the type of container you use
will inform the type of soil you'll want to use.
So something this, a very standard classic,
this is a five gallon black plastic nursery pot.
You can find these anywhere.
They have the advantage of being very cheap
and they're very easy to find.
The problem with them is that it's very easy to get water...
Sorry water logged soil
and create a very sort of damp swampy environment in there.
Especially in San Diego,
we get these summer months where we get this coastal fog.
And on those days, if I over water,
it might be a week before the sun really comes out again
and that plant's gonna suffer.
So I've opted to get away from these over time.
They also tend to break pretty easily.
So the next option is a grow bag.
This is a root pouch, seven gallon grow bag,
and a grow bag is great because it holds soil very well.
It has no hold in the bottom,
pests can't get in whereas that one you can.
The other thing that's nice about these
is that they actually do retain water
but they also let the pot breathe.
And the importance there is that, like I mentioned earlier,
if you have one of those overcast days
and I over water my tomatoes,
they could still actually breathe
and sort of evaporate off of the edges.
And over time as the plant grows
what's gonna happen is the root will hit the end wall
of the pot itself,
and then it's gonna try to get outside into the air
and it's gonna have to stop growing.
That's called air pruning
because once the root is exposed to air
it can't really survive.
So it's gonna create a nice dense network of roots in there.
Now when it comes to sizing,
seven gallon is probably the minimum
I would recommend for any tomato.
With a dwarf tomato you can get away with five gallons,
you just have to water more often.
That's the biggest trade off with pot size.
The bigger the pot, the more soil you'll have to get,
so it'll add up costing more.
But the nice thing is that if,
for example, you have a 10 or 15 gallon pot,
you might not have to water for two, three days.
Whereas if you had a five gallon pot,
you better believe you're gonna have to water it
every single day in summer and maybe even twice a day.
So I highly recommend going as big as you can.
It does cost more in soil but the trade off is worth it.
The last one I'm gonna mention briefly
is this sci-fi contraption right here.
This is called an air pot.
The way this works is that as you could see,
there's holes all over it.
There's holes on the bottom.
This is the ultimate air pruning pot.
It's very similar to how our 4-cells work
where it has these exposures cut into the side.
So when the root hits that again, it dies.
But the nice thing about it is,
you get a very nicely branched root structure.
So with this, you'll probably end up having roots
coming out to each one of these individual holes
and creating a very dense root network.
I haven't grown with it this season yet.
So I just wanted to show you guys the option.
I have a couple tomatoes that I'm growing in it right now
just to test it out.
But for this video, what we're going to be focusing on
is a 15 gallon root pouch.
Like I mentioned, I'm gonna go big this year.
Last year I went with seven and 10 gallons
and the watering was just a nightmare.
So I'm gonna save myself to trouble and go to 15 gallons.
So let's talk about different soil mixtures
that are ideal for these types of containers,
whether it's black plastic or a fabric bag like this.
So we're over here,
I have all the ingredients I need
for making a nice soil mixture for tomatoes.
So a couple things I'm going to mention
as I'm dumping stuff into this wheelbarrow,
the bag that we're going with like I mentioned,
is a 15 gallon bag.
So there's going to be a basic ratio
that all this is gonna follow.
It might sound a little complicated but it's not.
And that is a 2:2:1 ratio.
So what that means
is that's gonna be two parts of a high quality potting mix.
(soil pouring)
And really you just want to get basically the premium stuff
that you could find at the nursery.
And the idea behind that is that,
when you're going tomatoes
what you're putting in is what you're getting out.
And when you want really good tomatoes
you're gonna have to start with a really good soil.
So two parts of soil.
Now we're gonna come in with two parts of compost.
This is homemade compost that I made here
that I've sifted down on a half inch hardware cloth.
So this should be fully broken down.
It should be still a little bit of chunks left in there.
What this is going to do is,
it's going to do a couple different things.
The compost is going to provide a lot of nutrition
to the tomato throughout the season.
It's also going to provide a lot of those
beneficial bacteria and fungal communities,
cause that's how this compost broke down to begin with.
The trade off though is that compost compared
to something like soil,
the soil has stuff like perlite in it
that helps the water drain through the soil.
The compost is just organic matter basically.
So we need to add a little bit of extra aeration
and drainage and we're gonna do that by first
grabbing some perlite.
And when you get perlite,
I actually blasted this with some water
cause perlite has a lot of silica dust.
You don't really wanna breathe that in.
So I'm gonna go ahead dump that there.
This is going to be the one part.
So we have 2:2:1, but this is only half of the one.
And I'm gonna break down that ratio in a second.
The other half is a nice chunky vermiculite.
(bag rustling)
So this scoop should be roughly a gallon
Gonna dump that right there.
And let's talk about what 2:2:1 means.
So 2:2:1 means if you have a five gallon grow bag,
it's gonna be two gallons of soil,
two gallons of compost,
and one gallon of this aeration and drainage mix.
So the perlite is going to purely provide drainage.
It doesn't really hold that much water.
Obviously it holds a teeny bit
but this is quite lightweight.
Now the vermiculite is interesting
because what these are,
are little packets of a mineral called mica
that's been baked and it creates a sponge.
So the sponge will hold a ton of water in it
but it still actually lets some air through
because it's a very porous material.
So this will give us water retention but also aeration.
And this will give us primarily aeration.
The idea behind that is that these two
combined with the compost is gonna be a lot closer
to a finished potting mix.
So this is a fantastic base mixture
but we need to add a little bit of fertility.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna grab some
In this case, Worm Gold.
It's a nice worm castings blend
that also has other things like kelp in it.
We're gonna come in with a smaller scoop of AZOMITE.
Now AZOMITE I get a lot of questions about.
It's a pulverized volcanic rock.
The idea behind this is,
it contains all the different sort of trace elements
and minerals that plants need to grow.
So you kind of provided an insurance
that you have zero deficiencies
in whatever potting mix you're using or compost.
The other thing about it is that in theory
it should improve the nutrition
and the flavor of the tomato.
Because if it's being gated
by certain mineral or element that's not present,
you just won't have all that flavor potential.
So I like to add it in to everything that I do.
And the last thing we're gonna add
is a scoop of Tomato-tone.
And this is a organic tomato-centric fertilizer.
Some of the main differences
when you're talking about a tomato fertilizer
versus a non tomato-fertilizer
is that in this case, it actually has calcium included.
So tomatoes do need calcium,
I won't get into blossom end rot too much
but you just need a little bit of calcium present
to make sure you have a nice healthy tomato.
So now we have our 2:2:1 plus a couple bonuses
and the next thing we need to do is mix it.
I've been a huge fan of using these power...
Oh, there's a little plant.
I've been a huge fan of using these power planters
to mix my soil cause it really just makes life really easy.
(power planter mixing)
Oh, let's slow that down.
(power planter mixing)
So now we have a fully mixed, perfect soil for tomatoes.
Now, if you're growing in something like black plastic
where you don't have as much
sort of breath-ability from the fabric,
instead of throwing in the vermiculite
just go full perlite.
You wanna have a lot more drainage
because you don't wanna end up with water logged soil.
The idea behind this blend is that
you have good drainage, good fertility, good aeration,
and it has everything a tomato really needs
for those first couple months of life.
Once your tomato has set its first fruit,
you'll wanna go back in
and add a little granular fertilizer to the top.
The other thing you could do is every week or two
feed your tomatoes with a organic based fertilizer
diluted in water.
I could almost guarantee you
that this is going to provide you
with perfect tomatoes this season.
I won't guarantee it but now that this is done,
let's go ahead and fill up a bag
and talk about supporting something like a dwarf tomato.
Now we have our 15 gallon grow bag
filled with that perfect soil.
So let's go ahead and pop one of these guys up.
The thing that's a little bit different
about a dwarf tomato is that since it grows so short
you don't really have that much stem to bury.
Usually I always recommend letting the tomato get this big
and bury half of it.
In this case, I might bury that bottom inch,
I don't think it's gonna make that big of a difference.
So let's do a little placement test,
move a little more soil.
So I think right there, pretty ideal.
I'm gonna sink it in a little bit.
The nice thing about these 4-cells
is that I just put my finger on the bottom
while I pinch the stem, pull up,
and I have a perfect transplant with nice loose roots.
So that's one of the nice advantages of these guys.
Makes potting up very easy.
And while I advocate
that you could be pretty rough with seedlings
when I transplant, I really wanna be a little more careful
cause I wanna make sure that it doesn't start off
having a rough time.
So we're gonna go ahead, put some soil down, hill it up.
(hands clapping)
And ah, there we go.
I knew I had some.
So now what we're gonna do,
is the beauty of a dwarf tomato
compared to an indeterminate
is that they're really easy to support with a dwarf tomato.
You could literally just get a stakes like this bamboo pole.
And I think that's probably about four feet above me
and that's it.
As this grows, what I'm going to do
is I'm gonna take some stretchy twine
and sort of tie it loosely to the pole
as it continues to grow.
They don't really get that wide,
they don't get that tall like I mentioned,
so a single stake system
will actually work for a dwarf tomato,
which is another great reason
to grow dwarf tomatoes in containers.
So that's still growing, I won't tie any up,
but the last thing that we need to do
is provide the tomato with a little bit of water.
So it could start off its journey, having a nice drink.
And the idea behind this is that you wanna water it deeply
so that the roots are gonna go down
instead of staying at the surface,
instead of watering it infrequently
with little light passes,
give it a very, very deep water
and do that less frequently instead,
which is great for a drought.
And speaking of drought,
last thing we'll do is we'll get some garden straw
and we'll go ahead and mulch this up.
And that's really all there is to say
about growing these tomatoes.
There's a whole 'nother section
talking about pruning and all that
but I think we'll have to wait
a little bit later in the season
where we could have some nice examples
and I'll be sure to show you guys how to prune tomatoes,
how to maintain them throughout the season
but that's it for this video.
Thanks for watching.
Hope you guys picked something up, learned something new,
and I hope you guys like this video.
And I'll see you next time.
(relaxing guitar music)