Growing in pots or buckets with lids

[SpicyCurry]

People complain about rain messing up their tomatoes, but I haven’t seen many methods for keeping the rain away.

I thought about trying to train the vines around an elevated tarp or umbrella. It wouldn’t be too hard to secure a tarp to my T-posts.

I thought about mounding up the potting mix around the potted tomato plant, and then putting down and securing some aluminum foil to drain away most of the rain. “Reflective mulch” is supposedly beneficial for other reasons.

I also wondered why garden pots don’t come with lids, but I realized that people like to grow in 5 gallon buckets - and there are lids for buckets.

I decided this year to try 5 gallon buckets with lids on, growing through small holes I drilled into the side. I will set up drip irrigation with masterblend. Growing in 50:50 coco perlite.

Has anyone tried growing in buckets with lids? I have seen pictures of upside down tomato plants hanging from 5 gallon buckets - but people seem to usually have the lids off of those.

My main concern is if roots will have adequate oxygen. I will find out. To increase oxygen, I decided not to fill my coco/perlite mix above the hole my tomato is growing out of.

[Whwoz]

Welcome to the Junction from Down Under @SpicyCurry. Whereabouts are you from?

Certainly an interesting way of trying to grow tomatoes but of no use t someone whom is not worried about restricting water supply like myself, where I am often adding more.

[pepperhead212]

Welcome to the forum!

I grow a lot of tomatoes, and some other things, in sub-irrigated planters, and something I found useful is that reflective plastic mulch - some of it I've re-used for many years, to the point where it looses much of the reflectiveness! Here is an album of a bunch of photos I took of tomatoes, showing a lot of that foil mulch, some new, some showing its age, but only losing the shine after several years.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/91097628@ ... 7977290367

And here are some of those upside down tomatoes, you asked about, that I planted a long time ago (wasn't sure I'd find a photo!). This was productive, but definitely a 2-person job, to hang them. I had them hooked up to a drip irrigation system, with a line to each. The SIPs turned out to be more productive, and easier, and there is a dripline hooked to each of those.
Upside down tomatoes, before fruiting. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Good luck with your garden!

[AKgardener]

I bought these pop up greenhouses for my beds and mini green houses .. re did the entire garden that way

[Danny]

Haven't tried to grow anyhing the way you are doing it, looks interesting though. Have used buckets and cut up some of the "space" shiny emergency blankets to circle around the bottom of the main stem on tomatoes, with the drip underneath the blanket piece. Cheap if you catch them on a sale and one did several buckets.

Looking forward to see how your plants do for you!

[Shule]

I've thought about stuff like that, but I've never tried it. I didn't think about making a hole on the side of the bucket, though. We don't get a lot of rain during most of the growing season, but we sometimes do in the fall/winter/spring. I probably thought about it as a mulch alternative, primarily, though. It could be an interesting way to lock in moisture (to reduce watering needs) and ensure there isn't too much sun on the soil by the roots. It might heat up the container a lot, though.

If I have to garden in containers, I prefer 18-gallon moving totes (ideally a more sun/freeze-resistant kind, like the four dark brown ones we have now; they weren't advertized as resistant; I just found out from using them; all the gray 10-gallon ones broke down after a few years). You don't have to water 18-gallon ones nearly as much as a 10-gallon tote, a 5-gallon bucket, or a 4-gallon bucket.

[PlainJane]

I tried tomatoes once in hard plastic containers, but in my N. Florida climate I found that fabric grow bags work better.

[SpicyCurry]

I am growing in Indiana. This is my fourth tomato season.

Season #1: Grew in clay soil. Yield was moderate and groundhogs ate most of my tomatoes. Flavor of the tomatoes was extraordinary.
Varieties: Tappys, Abraham Lincoln (bakers creek variety), Gold Jubilee, sunrise bumblebee, golden king of Siberia
Favorite for flavor: Abraham Lincoln and Sunrise BumbleBee. Tappys was also excellent flavor and out produced Abraham Lincoln by a large margin.

Season #2: Bato buckets with 100% perlite, recirculating system. Growth was extremely fast and high production. Flavor was ok but not as amazing as I remembered. Flavor improved when I increased EC toward the end of the season. I didn’t have time to pick all of the cherry tomatoes. Some splitting with rain but not too bad.
Varieties: black cherry, sunrise bumblebee, Cherokee purple, Kellogg breakfast
Favorite: black cherry

Season #3
Tried to increase flavor with high EC and under watering. 80:20 coco perlite drain to waste. Production was good but high percentage of ruined fruit from splitting or blossom end rot. Flavor was very sweet, but perhaps still not as good as my memories of season #1. Perhaps tasting homegrown heirloom tomatoes for the first time is a magical moment, the intensity of which can never be recreated?
In the fall, even the dew was enough to split my underwatered tomatoes.
I wasted probably 90% of my harvest due to cracked fruit, but still had more tomatoes than my family could eat. Hydroponic fertilizer seems magically create high production even when other factors are suboptimal.
Varieies: Sudduth brandywine, Abe Lincoln, Hugh’s, Lilian’s yellow, Aunt Ginny’s purple, Honey Delight, and Mountain magic.
Favorites: Honey Delight was my best variety. Flavor comparable to Sunrise bumblebee or black cherry, but larger size made picking them less of a chore. Excellent flavor, production, vigor, and consistency. Low susceptibility to splitting.
Mountain magic was a disappointment. Flavor underwhelming, first batch was good sized, but after that they were more cherry sized. Less production and vigor than Honey Delight.
Brandwine was excellent.
Aunt Ginny’s purple was very good, but it had a larger core and was somehow less aesthetically pleasing to me compared to to brandywine. Excellent vigor and production.
Abe Lincoln was at least as tasty as Brandwine, but again this variety was a poor producer for me. Ready to give up on this variety.
Hugh’s was beautiful and tasty. Would grow again.
Lilian’s yellow was tasty, but not significantly better than Hugh’s. Would not grow again due to relatively poor production and being the first plant to get fungal disease in the fall.

Current season I am growing Bradywine Sudduth, Aunt Ginny’s purple, and Anna Russian. Going to not restrict watering but keep EC high and may try adding a little table salt to the water.

[svalli]

This is a great idea for our new rooftop terrace. I would like to grow tomatoes there, but have been worried about rain. My container grown tomatoes do usually have a roof over them in the greenhouse or by the wall of the house under the eaves.

I started to search for storage boxes which have lids and found these with handles. There are separate lids sold for these. I would let the tomatoes to grow through two of the handle holes.

image.png

I would make these self watering by drilling holes on the sides 2-3" from the bottom and fill the bottom with LECA pebbles and put a piece of landscaping fabric on top of that to keep the soil separate from the pebbles. I have used that method successfully in many of my containers. I would need to make some kind of watering pipe to go through one of the handle holes.

Another challenge will be supporting the vines when they grow. That roof can get windy and I cannot put stakes there, so I am planning to build some kind of horizontal trellising system. Training the vines to grow horizontal, would also protect them from high winds.

Thanks @SpicyCurry for posting that idea!

[SpicyCurry]

Tomatoes are doing reasonably well so far. I put my buckets inside of pots which have elevated drainage holes. I wanted to make sure my coco perlite mix couldn’t wick up any water from the ground.

May here has been colder than average . Low was 42 degrees F last night.

Picture here is Anna Russian. It has been a vigorous grower both inside and outside. A few small tomato fruits are already present.

[peroto777]

They seem starved for both nitrogen and sunlight, very light green, skinny and spindly, harvest and taste will be severely limited.
5 gallon buckets are too small of a container for indeterminates, no matter what hydroponic nutrients you give them, if you insist of growing in containers at least get those big totes from Costco when they go on sale for $8, they are indestructible. It will cost you more in potting mix to fill them, but your tomatoes will be way happier.
Looks like you have plenty of space to grow in the ground, so why not do that again? They will taste 2 times better and be less of a hassle, especially with tomato cages.

[pepperhead212]

Here are a bunch of photos I've taken of the different types of sub-irrigated planters I have made. Some of the 18 gal totes, a couple 10 gal planters, some 4 gal buckets inside 5 gal, and some 5 gal buckets inside 6 gal. I have a photo of the Pro-Mix I used to use, when I got it dirt cheap (sorry ), just over $20, but it's almost triple that now, so I make my own, with just peat, 20% perlite, and some worm castings, and different things for different plants. I add just a small amount of micorrhyzae when planting the seedlings - just 1 tsp granular. And I don't use those fertilizer "pillows" any more, with the non-organic granular - the original fertilizer I used - but I mix a good amount of Espoma granular, which can be mixed in, without messing up the roots. And for tomatoes, some of the organic dolomite.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/91097628@ ... 9806690443

Here are just the 18 gal SIPs:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/91097628@ ... 900736848/

[SpicyCurry]

They seem starved for both nitrogen and sunlight, very light green, skinny and spindly, harvest and taste will be severely limited.
5 gallon buckets are too small of a container for indeterminates, no matter what hydroponic nutrients you give them, if you insist of growing in containers at least get those big totes from Costco when they go on sale for $8, they are indestructible. It will cost you more in potting mix to fill them, but your tomatoes will be way happier.
Looks like you have plenty of space to grow in the ground, so why not do that again? They will taste 2 times better and be less of a hassle, especially with tomato cages.

Heart tomatoes are known for their spindly growth.

5 gallon buckets are larger containers than what commercial greenhouse growers use.

Drip irrigation is the key to growing large plants in small containers.