Are you sure you want to grow tomato in a container? Tomatoes have deep roots and you need to water the tomato plant deeply for optimal growth. I personally use organic fertilizer from miracle grow. Hope this helps

Here is a link that might be useful: Grow Organic Vegetables

Well .sorry to say its not the media its the grower.

Dickiefickle, I've noticed you aren't the smartest guy in the world. But thanks for your feedback regardless of his uselessness.

I am smart enough to know there are thousands of successful growers who use the products you listed who don't experience extremely restricted growth in everything they try to grow as you stated you do.
So... the grower must be doing something wrong

In my mind, the stuff you've been trying IS the high priced stuff.
My plants are nothing more than 2 good sized shovel fulls of aged horse manure (2 year) in every hole. The plants are healthy and the fruit is plentiful.

There's a single cherry in a container with nothing but aged horse and it has done just fine also.

Hard to beat the price on it.

Well fickledickle, if you knew much about potting mixes, you'd know that all of the varieties I referenced are 50-50 at best. Some have good success and many don't. If you look at ratings of them online, they all rate very low. But they do give a money back guarantee and I took advantage of it and bought it with that in mind since it was on sale.

Now, if you have anything to say about growing in Black Kow compost, feel free to add your opinion. But if you have nothing to offer, why comment?

I agree Hankjr. I wish I had access to horse manure because I've seen other reports such as yours. I'd like to give it a try and it's just the right price.

i dont grow tomatos in pots but i do grew basil in them and i bought a $10 bag of MG mix and it was terrible mostly chunks of wood and some fluffy brown stuff not sure what it was/ went thru 2 packs of seed trying to get it to grow with no luck / finally dumped it along the back fence row and got a diff brand and got basil growing like mad / so yeah you can get bad potting mix