You forgot to ask about grow bags.LOL

Oh yeah, growbags too! Thanks plantermann

She doesn't want to write a book but we are forcing her to do it one chapter at a time. LOL

Carol,

I grow tomatoes in anything and everything that will hold dirt, including (but not limited to) the following: white (or colored) 5-gallon buckets, the white or yellow buckets that large quantities of cat litter comes in (I spray paint them a lovely dark green with the Fusion paint made for spray-painting plastics), galvanized tubs, clay flower pots, plastic flower pots, window boxes (very dwarf tomatoes), cheap black plastic nursery pots (the size that large shrubs or small trees come in) and (as Terrence mentioned) Sunleaves Grow Bags. I haven't tried Smart Pots yet, but trying them is on my "to do" list. My gigantic containers are somewhat larger than a half whiskey barrel--about as big around or a maybe a little larger, and a few inches taller. One of my "old rancher" gardening friends gave them to me. He gets some sort of cattle feed or supplement in them. Some of them are black, others are beige or white, and one is pale pink!

Over the years, I've tried many soilless mixes and potting soils. I also tried ordinary garden soil just to see if it would be as awful as everyone said it would be (and it was).

One of the worst was the Miracle-Grow Moisture Control Soil. I had though it might be a good thing to use, but it held too much moisture and did not drain well enough. (I had thought that in our heat, it would be impossible for it to hold too much moisture--but I was wrong.) It might have worked well in summer's heat, but it kept the plants way too wet in the spring.

Any soilless mix is preferable to a really heavy bagged potting soil. In my experience, the cheaper the potting soil, the poorer the quality, too, and some of the cheaper ones are really heavy and just do not drain well at all.
So, I've finally gotten to where I just mix up a tomato-growing version of Al's Mix (from the container forum).

I start with his basic recipe and make a few changes. My changes to his original ingredients are noted in the parentheses:

3 cu. ft. pine bark fines
5 gallons peat or compost (I prefer compost)
5 gallons perlite (I substitute composted manure because I don't want the containers to drain too quickly in our heat)
1 cup lime
2 cups controlled release fertilizer (I use Espoma Tomato-Tone 4-7-10)
1/2 cup micro-nutrient powder or 1 gallon composted manure (I skip this since I use compost instead of peat and manure instead of perlite, and the tomato tone gives me all the trace elements I need.)

Then, to this soilless brew, I add a few of the amendments from the Earl's Hole Method of Growing Tomatoes from the Tomato Forum:

1 handful of epsom salt (per plant)
1 handful of bone meal (per plant)

And then I make my own addition:

1 handful of greensand (for potassium)

I mix all the major ingredients (but not the 'handfuls') together, usually in a blue plastic wading pool. Then, I put the mix in the container I'm going to use, and then I add the ingredients that are measured by the 'handful'. In an average container (5 to 10 gallons), I add one handful. In a large container (10 to 20 gallons) I add two handfuls. In a gigantic container (over 20 gallons) I add three handfuls. I stir the 'handfuls' into the soilless mix really, really well and then add the plant.

I water the plant well to settle down the soilless mix. Sometimes I use plain water, but if it is a really hot, dry day and I am worried about transplant shock, I'll water it in with whatever liquid organic fertilizer I have handy--liquid fish, compost tea, Garret Juice, liquid seaweed, etc. THEN, I add mulch....either bark or grass clippings, whicheve is handy. THEN, I scatter a handful or two of Tomato-Tone on the soil surface so it can slowly wick its way down into the soil over time. Depending on how much I find myself watering, I top dress with Tomato Tone throughout the growing season (I go though lots of it each year) every 2 to 4 weeks.

I do not bottom water. I think bottom watering tends to have an adverse effect on the roots since they always stay wet. I top water, using either a water hose/watering wand or drip irrigation. (The advantage to drip irrigation is that you can put it on a timer if you are going to be away a lot.) Sometimes, during the worst part of the summer heat, I have to water all but the gigantic containers twice a day.

The pots probably do get too hot but I choose not to obsess over it. (EVERYTHING gets too hot in our heat, so I just don't worry about it.)

One advantage to using containers is that you can move them around to suit you, if you want. In the early spring, I keep the early-planted pots on the concrete apron that is attached to the garage/barn so they can soak up the heat from the concrete slab. If a heavy rain or hail threatens, I drag them up under the patio cover (like I did early this afternoon).

In the summer, I just put them wherever.....but I will move them to a spot where they get some late afternoon sun in the late July to mid-August timeframe if we're having our typical relentless heat.

I take great pains to match the mature size of the tomato plant to the size of the container. For example, in five gallon or smaller pots I only plant the smallest determinate or ISI tomato plants--like Better Bush, Bush Early Girl, Bush Celebrity, Bush Big Boy, Extreme Bush, Polish Dwarf, New Big Dwarf, etc. Window boxes are for the tiniest tomatoes like Red Robin or Yellow Canary or Window Box Roma. Medium-sized containers (10-20) are great for almost any standard determinate or semi-determinate (or ISI) , and I save the largest containers (the ones I call 'gigantic') for the most vigorous indeterminate plants--Better Boy, Sweet Million, Brandy Boy, Porterhouse, Neves Azorean Red, Brandywine, and Black Krim, for example.

This is my first year to try SunLeaves Grow Bags. I actually ordered them last year when the rain wouldn't quit, but never got around to using them. They only hold 10 gallons of soil, so I'll probably only plant dwarf, determinate, or semi-determinates in them. I don't know if they are big enough for ISIs, but I have some Husky Red and Husky Gold that I might try just to see.

If I ever come across Smart Pots in a store, I'll probably buy a couple so I can see how they do.

I don't just grow tomatoes in containers....but herbs, peppers, and flowers as well. I use the same soil for them all, pretty much, but substitute Plant-Tone for the Tomato-Tone plant food for the herbs and flowers. (I use Tomato-Tone for the peppers, though.)

So far this year, the only tomatoes I've been growing in containers are the ones I planted for really early tomatoes: Better Bush, Husky Red and Grape. On those eight plants, I have a total of seven tomatoes so far, and lots of blooms. Yesterday, I planted a few more plants (Husky Red, Husky Gold, Bush Big Boy, and some others) in containers of various sizes. I'm going to try to plant my Grow Bags next week, if life and weather permits.

If you have more questions, feel free to ask.

Dawn

I can see I am going to be spending some money on components for soilless mix. I said I had 10,000 containers in another post, but that wasn't quite true. I probably have 30 tree size and 4 or 5 larger, but I have many, many that are probably big enough for a pepper (Maybe?). I have only tried growing veggies in pots once (a tom and a pepper) without much success. Then I learned why by reading the container forum. I have so many plants growing and I really should try some containers. I have lots of the cheap cages that will probably be good enough for a determinate tom. Woo-who I am going for more junk tomorrow.

I tried to find pine fines the other day and couldn't. Everything that I found looked too big. I will check Lowes tomorrow. I have Lowes, Wal-mart and a nursery or two. I may have to go to Joplin to find everything I need.
I have peat, epsom salts, greensand, and will probably get a truck load of mushroom compost in a month or so. I guess I can start with peat or cow manure then just top dress with compost when I get it.

I will submit and then probably take my computer down. The thunder seems to be getting closer and on the map it appears to be headed our way. It is still a little south of us so may go into Arkansas without getting us. It is hard to tell. I will be back on after the storm passes.

Carol,

If you can't find pine fines (trying saying that three times in rapid succession), you can use any finely shredded bark....I've used finely shredded hardwood, cedar and cypress as well. I was worried cedar (oily, aromatic wood that it is) would have an adverse affect on flavor, but it didn't.

I've been checking the radar and watching the storms heading your way....I'm thinking they may miss y'all too (but I'm certainly not a weather forecaster LOL).

Now that the hail has passed us by, I can drag my containers back out into the sun tomorrow morning. Now, if we just get through the one cold night this weekend, I think I'll believe winter is over.

Dawn

Oops. I saw the subject title and thought you had caged a turkey.

HA HA Scot - You've been in the water too long.

We don't always draw the right mental picture, do we. My son lives in Nigeria and on his blog he wrote about seeing a man "stoned" on the side of the road. He didn't mean drunk or on dope, but literal stoned with the bolders still there beside him. He saw it on the way to work and he was still there when he came home from work. Can you imagine? How blessed we are to live in this country, floods, tornados, crooked politics and all. Well, I could live without the politics, especially right now.

Bumping for quick access to Dawn's shared soilless potting mix recipe.

This was very well timed as I was going to look for the thread this weekend. Since 3 cubic feet is roughly 22 gallons, this is very roughly a 4 parts pine fines, 1 part peat/compost, 1 part perlite mix ratio. I tried a 3:2:1 ratio last year, and it retained too much water (lots of cracking).

Dawn, is this still your go-to mix ratio?

Thanks!

Lee

Lee, It pretty much is, but I've also gotten lazy and sometimes just buy the Miracle Grow Moisture Control mix which is essential for summer success here in Love County were, as you know better than anyone else here except me, often has some pretty dry spells along with wicked droughts and flash droughts. So....I don't think MG is the devil's child, not when I am looking for convenience.

I have changed something major. I now fill the bottom half of the mineral feed tubs, which are awfully big and require a lot of soil-less mix to fill them up, with hugelkulture type materials in the bottom half of the container. Why? It is both complex and simple. It is simple in the sense that hugelkulture type materials fill up space, which means you spend less time and money creating or buying a soil-less mix to fill up the space. It is complex in that it is one solution to how a person can successfully grow organically in large containers. Let me explain.

In order for organic fertilizers to work properly, they need to be broken down into individual components by biologically active soil. It is the living microorganisms in the soil that make organic fertilizers work. Without them, plants grown organically in a sterile, soil-less mix cannot properly utilize the available organic nutrients. They just cannot. Research has proven this. Therefore, when we create a sterile, soil-less mix, we do not have biologically active soil (although, if we use compost, it is more biologically active than the same mix if made with peat moss). In the beginning---maybe not in my first or second year of growing in large containers, but soon thereafter, I tried to do this by buying this biggest, chunkiest wood mulch I could find and filling the bottom half of the containers with that. It helped, but I didn't think it helped enough.

I decided to work around this whole issue in a little bit more of a natural way by creating the needed biological activity in the bottom half of the container with materials found on our property. I layer all sorts of stuff into the bottom of the container---but my favorites are half-rotted wood (imagine all the good fungi and bacteria in that stuff) collected from our woodland---just your basic deadfall. I like to find half-rotted logs that are soft and that you can almost break apart with your hands. Usually, I look for a large rotted tree trunk on the woodland floor on a very cold day in winter (no snakes active at that time), break it up into pieces and use the pieces to fill in the bottom of the containers. Sometimes I keep my eye on a big tree trunk lying on the ground for several years before it gets soft enough that I can break it apart to use in this manner. Then I add smaller ingredients around it---leaf mold is a favorite, natural wood compost (often found on the ground under and around the rotting tree trunk), small branches and limbs, chopped/shredded autumn leaves, etc. So, I guess in essence I am stealing some biologically active ingredients from our woodland to use in my containers. But, with 10+ acres of woodland and plenty of deadfall trees (the drought of 2011 killed quite a few, though I suppose statistically it wasn't a significant number), I have enough dead stuff laying around that I don't feel bad taking that resource out of the woodland. This works so well that it blows my mind. Not only am I putting biologically active material into the containers but, if I choose large enough chunks of wood (I try to have a mix of all sizes), they will become water soaked and will hold moisture longer than a plain soil-less mix. In my location this is essential in order to keep the plants happy in our typical July-August weather. Since you live somewhere that probably has more consistent summer moisture than I do most years, this might not be as important for you as it is for me.

Have I seen a difference in pots with hugelkultur material in the bottom? Absolutely. The plants seem happier and healthier. I don't have to water as often. It seems like the organic fertilizers work better than they did before.

After a while, all that hugelkultur material breaks down and you have to pour all the growing mix out of the containers and add new hugelkultur stuff to the bottom again. I'm okay with that. I like having biologically active soil. And, when it breaks down, it basically turns into compost and then, eventually, into humus. That's not a problem.

Without the hugelkultur materials, it seems necessary to sometimes give the plants a non-organic water-soluble fertilizer to boost them during periods of heavy production. There's nothing wrong with this if it is someone's choice not to be fully organic. It is just that, for me, the desire to remain as organic as possible is strong, particularly when growing edible crops. We are what we eat.

Those of you in NE OK who have access to the mushroom farm and who can drive there and buy a load of it might find it works well as part of your soil-less mix too. I'd do that if I lived a few hundred miles closer to the mushroom farm.

Nowadays, whenever I build a new raised bed, I add hugelkultur materials to it as well. I am a big believer in hugelkultur. I had trouble with hugelkultur beds in the beginning because I tried to build them in the tradition hilltop/raised bed way. They became, sadly, magnets for rodents and snakes. Why wouldn't they? I was essentially creating a nice little habitat for them. So, now when I do it, my hugelkultur materials are added to raised beds built with wooden sides to contains all the soil/other materials and lined with hardware cloth to exclude voles. When I build them like this, after I replace the soil on top of the hugelkulture material, these beds are no more attractive to rodents and snakes than regular raised beds. And, one thing I can add is that, so far, I've never had any rodents or snakes get into the soil/hugelkultur mix in the containers. That's important to me because if the voles infiltrate the containers, then the snakes will come as well. I know this is not a big issue for many of you, but here in our area, I'm going to do anything/everything I can to avoid having to deal with timber rattlers and copperheads.

I hope this long explanation helps. I didn't even go back and read the original post from 2008 as the way I do many things has changed since then, (and I think that I barely even remember 2008) but my commitment to growing in containers remains about the same, only with the addition of the hugelkultur material. Somewhere down the road, I'll probably learn of other ways to tweak the mix in containers to get the best possible results because I think that we, as gardeners, never stop learning.

Dawn

Dawn, in your first post above, you said that MG Moisture Control was one of the worst potting mixes you'd ever used. Now you're saying it's essential for summer. Has the increasing drought made you change your mind? I think I'm going to refresh the cucumber pots with MGMC this year, considering how much water they want. I do use a lot of mushroom compost in my grow bags, plus a little Black Kow. I think it helps hold moisture in better. I've read that grow bags are more of a raised bed than a container, and can be filled with that in mind.

Rebecca, At that time, we had had a really wet growing season the first year I used MG Moisture Control and I hated it. Nothing did well in it. Back then I wasn't really tracking the weather very closely or trying to anticipate what the weather would do. Nowadays, well before planting time arrives, I try to anticipate what the weather will be like and to formulate a growing mix that will match the weather. Sometimes it works out well and sometimes it doesn't. I think they reformulated the MG Moisture Control and tweaked it a bit after it had been out a while because when I tried it again in a drought year, it was wonderful---so much better than either my homemade mix or the regular MG, or anything else I tried from HD....maybe Vertagreen? I don't remember now.

These days, I try to decide by the end of January if I am expecting a wet year, an average year or a dry year and then formulate the mix accordingly. Of course, it is an intuitive thing more than anything else because it is hard enough to get an accurate 10-day forecast, much less one that tells you what to expect for the entire growing season.

I am worried that 2015 and 2016 have ruined me because they were so very wet that I may have forgotten how horrible the drought years (2003, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014) are. Last year was a mixed bag, with it being much wetter in the first half of the year and much drier in the last half. I had mostly ornamentals in the big pots last year, and they were in morning sun/afternoon shade, so I really didn't have to water too much in the last half of the growing season when we got so dry. I do think the hugelkultur materials help with that---they soak up water like a sponge and release it very slowly. I am actually surprised the plants did as well as they did when the rain wasn't falling because I wasn't really watering.

I think that all I have to do this year is add compost and Garden-Tone or Tomato-Tone (or Tomato Magic or something similar) to the pots from last year because that mix was fresh last year, had good hugelkultur ingredients in the bottom half of the pots, and really didn't pack down too much either....maybe because there was so much less rain, and I didn't irrigate much. The tomatoes have to be in pots this year because the two and a half rainy years really brought lots of fungal diseases and I want the tomatoes to be growing somewhere else this year where they haven't grown lately---so that means in the big containers. I'm going to put them in the back yard, midway between the front garden and back garden and then hope for the best.

I haven't grown in grow bags in a while now. They just dry out too much in my climate in a dry year, but I do think they are more like raised beds than containers since they drain so well and have such good air flow if you're using the porous kinds of grow bags and not the plastic ones.

One of these years I'm going to grow a dwarf tomato plant in a bag of nothing but Black Kow---just slit the bag open and plant into it like they do on the Black Kow webpage, just because I want to see for myself how well it would work here. I do love Black Kow, although I avoid all other cow manure nowadays because of herbicide carryover. I've never ever had even a hint of herbicide carryover in Black Kow, so I'll keep using it until I do (which, hopefully, never happens).

Part of what makes growing in containers potentially so tricky is the whole thing about putting together a mix that you think will adequately match whatever growing conditions you will have that year. It is like gambling---when I am mixing up a mix that is aimed at either significantly wetter or significantly drier conditions that usual, I'm gambling with whatever will be growing in that mix. It is sort of amazing how well I am able to match the soil-less mix to the conditions I'm expecting (or, maybe, hoping for) in any given year. This year, with most if not all the tomatoes going into containers, I need to guess right about which mix to prepare. I'm still planning for drier than average conditions.

Dawn

Well, if you're planning for drier, then I'm planning for drier too.

I do think it's interesting how things can change over the years, and we can tell just by following these threads!

Here ya go, Megan!

Bump. Hope everyone read to the bottom.

That was an interesting read. I started it, but not seen how she changed her mind over the years.

I want to try again this year, this past summer was a flop. Containers are hard for me, it seems as though I have to babysit them, they get dry, they blow over, and it cost a lot for the mix. But I am not ready to give up yet.

I got a bunch of mineral tubs from my brother and plan to use them again this year. I've also been successful growing tomatoes in kitty litter buckets and 5 gallon containers, but I did have to babysit them. I got a bunch of dwarf and micro tomatoes in a swap and I'm going to try some of them. They say you can grow in 1 gallon containers so I'm going to test it.

CAROL!!! Oh my goodness, I have wondered where you were and hoping you'd post at some point.

There are a few names I have taken advice to heart from when I first got on this forum (12 years ago, my how time flies) and those are Dawn, Amy, George, and Carol. Those are just names that always stuck out as having more wisdom that I could ever imagine having. :)