Grow Cherry Tomatoes in a Container

Do you love cherry tomatoes but you really want to grow them in a container and you're not exactly sure how because they get so big? In this video, I'm going to show you how to do just that. Hey, I'm Brian with Next Level Gardening and if you're looking to join an online garden community that offers tips, tricks, and support to help you take your gardening to the next level, you're in the right place. Get started now by clicking subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss anything. Now, let's get growing. I've never really been a big cherry tomato fan. I don't know why, but this year I'm actually growing two different types, the Sweetheart Cherry and Sun Gold. Sun Gold, after all of your comments, I'm actually looking forward to the most. I also want to try to grow cherry tomatoes in a container. Now, usually, the bigger container, the better, especially because the biggest problem you run into with containers is keeping them moist and keeping enough nutrients in the soil because it does leach out quickly. So, the smallest you'd ever want to use for any type of indeterminate tomato would be seven gallons, five gallons at the very least. This one, it's bigger than that, but we have a dry climate and I want to make sure it gets plenty of water. So, I have one of my cherry tomatoes here in my solo cup. It's been potted up all the way and it does have a really nice root system coming along. In fact, it's perfect. They're not filling the cup, but they're holding it together just enough. So, I'm not going to go through how to reinvigorate the soil that you had in a container already. Just know that you don't have to throw it away and I will put a video link down below of one I just did a few weeks ago on how to reinvigorate your container soil so you don't have to throw it away. So, I've already emptied out just a little bit of it and I'm going to add in some new just to top it off. I'm using Kellogg's raised bed potting mix. You can use whatever type of organic potting mix you want. You want to bring it up to about within two inches or so from the top of the container. Now, we want to add a little more nutrients because whatever grew in here last year pretty much emptied the container of nutrients. So, of course, as my standby, I always start off with granular organic fertilizer and in my situation, it's Neptune's Harvest crab and lobster. It's just the ground up shells of crab and lobster. I'm going to put a handful down in the hole where I'm going to plant the tomato and then they also have a kelp meal and that's going to give it a good general kind of slow release. Not super slow, but over the next three months, it's going to break down and really give a good consistent feeding and nutrients to the soil at the bottom where the roots are going to get started growing. Now, the thing about a tomato, cherry tomato included, is that they grow roots all along their stem and so you want to plant it as deep as possible because the more stem you have underneath the soil, the more roots are going to grow and the stronger the plant's going to be from the very beginning. So, it's optional to take off the leaves. I always like to just twist off the leaves and I'm going to leave, I'll leave that much at the top. So, now we've got a good maybe three to four inches of extra stem that'll start growing roots almost immediately. So, make sure the hole is deep enough for the soil and the extra three inches of stem. I'm going to tilt this so you can see it a little bit. I've only got one camera today. So, we're going to plant it really deep right in the center of the container. There's two more ingredients I want to add because one of the biggest problems with tomatoes, one of the biggest diseases tomatoes get is blossom end rot. If you've had a tomato fruit that the bottom turns black or brown and looks rotten, that's blossom end rot and that is caused by a lack of calcium absorption into the plant and into the fruit. Now, a lot of people think that is just a lack of calcium in the soil. Typically, that's not the problem at all. There are very few garden soils at least that are missing calcium. Usually, it's a watering issue. So, you want to make sure that the soil stays consistently moist. It doesn't dry out for an extended period or the plant can't bring calcium up into itself to feed those fruit and you're going to get blossom end rot. So, to supplement because we are in a pot and they can't go into the soil for calcium if they need it and they're limited on water sometimes, they can't just send their roots further out for more water. They're stuck in the container. I am going to supplement tomatoes in a pot in a container with calcium and I use gypsum. It's pretty inexpensive and I just kind of make a little trench around the tomato and just put about a handful in and just kind of work it into the top couple inches of the soil and then as it gets watered, it's going to take it down near the roots a little bit slowly. It is a mineral. So, now that plus the crab and lobster, there's plenty of calcium in here. So, make sure you just keep it watered and it will be able to take that calcium up as needed. Another ingredient that tomatoes love is magnesium. They really need magnesium to produce big juicy fruit and so this is one of the only times in the garden that I will use Epsom salts. I don't use Epsom salts in the ground. I know all over the internet Epsom salts pretty much cures every garden ill known to man but this is really the only time I use it is in a container with tomatoes and I'm going to put it the same way as the gypsum. Just kind of sprinkle a handful around and work it into the top couple of inches. Now, every two weeks throughout the season, I'm going to feed it with Neptune's Harvest tomato and veg. I love this product because not only does it have the NPK, a higher middle number to feed the fruit of the plant, it also has humates in it which helps build the soil and feed the microbes in the soil and it has yucca extract. Now, this is especially great for containers because that is a wetting agent, a natural wetting agent which holds on to moisture. So, in a container, it's exactly what you want especially for a plant that takes up lots of moisture and lots of nutrients like tomatoes do. One more thing I want to do to keep the moisture in as much as possible is create a nice barrier over the soil with some mulch. Now, you can use anything. You can use straw, you can use grass clippings, leaves. I'm actually going to use some wood chips, wood shavings that I created my very own self when I chopped the hedge in the front yard and shredded it. Anyway, a nice two-inch layer of mulch around the tomato is going to help keep the moisture in the container. So, now we need to talk about support. Cherry tomatoes are indeterminate. Now, if you've watched any of my other videos on tomatoes when I'm talking indeterminate, that just means it's a tomato that will continue to grow bigger and bigger and bigger and produce and produce and produce until the cold weather comes and kills it back to the ground. Which means if you live in a mild winter climate like me, you could get a really long growing season. Now, I know if you've followed me for any length of time, you know that I grow my indeterminate tomatoes on cordons one stem up a twine and I trim off all the side growth. I'll be doing a video on that actually when I plant my tomatoes here in a couple of weeks and show you exactly how I train them better than I've ever done before. I've actually got a great idea to show you because I've never really been able to visually show it well because tomatoes grow a lot slower than I want them to to be able to show the growth and how I work with them as they grow. So, I've got a really good idea up my sleeve. So, stick around for that. But cherry tomatoes, even though they are indeterminate, they're not pruned the same way. On regular indeterminate tomatoes, we're pinching out the side growth. Some people call them suckers. Those suckers don't tend to produce very many tomatoes. They just take away from the main stem and the energy of the plant and the tomatoes that that produces. And so, we trim all those out. On a cherry tomato, however, it's the opposite. The side growth, the suckers, actually produce quite a bit of fruit. So, if you cut those out, all of those, you're cutting out most of your fruit. So, instead, what we're going to do, and this isn't big enough to do it yet, but in the armpits of the tomato, you've got the branch, the trunk growing straight up, and you've got a leaf branch sticking out here. You're going to see something growing right there, and that's the sucker, the side growth. Like I said, in the other type of tomatoes, we pinch that out and only allow this main stem to keep growing up. On a cherry tomato, the first two or three at the bottom, the first two or three side branches, you'll pluck those out just to let the rest of the plant get off to a good start. And then, you're going to let the rest go, and you can kind of tie it up as it grows. Then, when it gets really big, too big for whatever area you have, then you can just start to prune for size. Now, we do have to give it something to climb on. Otherwise, it's just going to be all over the ground. So, I'm going to back the camera up here and then show you what I use. So, I have mentioned in the past that I don't use tomato cages, don't like tomato cages for most things. They're okay for determinants, as long as they're a sturdy one. You can buy some in the store that fall apart as soon as you pick them up. So, you want to get a sturdy tomato cage. For determinant plants that are only going to be three or four feet tall, they're perfect. For a six foot tall cherry tomato, you want to get two. And so, what you're going to do is sit one in there in the pot, kind of open up the three wires a little bit. This is upside down. This one, we're going to turn right side up and put down the middle and kind of line up the wires a little bit. And you can just twist these around just a little bit to keep it a little more sturdy. But what you have here is about a five foot tall tomato cage that at the top and the bottom are relatively the same diameter. When you use one tomato cage and it's smaller at the bottom and big on top, it's very top heavy because the plant's top heavy naturally. It's going to grow up and drape over. And just to stabilize this even further, we're going to put one wooden stake along one of these wires. And you can tie this on here with some wire or some twine. But that's going to give you a really nice sturdy trellis for your cherry tomato to climb on. And as the branches grow, you can help them out by using some twine or elastic line. I've got some on my website on products I love that can hold them a little bit easier, maybe make it a little neater. If it starts getting large and overgrowing this entire thing completely, then you can start trimming back for size. And if you cut it back, it will put out again, as long as you've got enough time left in the season. Just like a shrub, you cut it back, it puts on new growth and new fruit. Another thing you want to do along the same lines talking about pruning is at the bottom of the plant, once it gets several feet tall, the bottom leaves are going to start turning brown, turning yellow. That doesn't mean they have a disease. It's just the leaves are getting old. Keep those plucked off because those are the first leaves that disease will strike. They always go for the weakest first. So as the leaves start to yellow, remove them. If you live in a wet summer climate, you get lots of rain, lots of humidity. You're going to want to make as much airflow through the plant as possible. And so you can go into the plant and just start removing leaves in the center. They're going to get really compact in there and you're going to feel a lot of moisture. Just start removing those leaves. You want to be able to see through the plant from several different angles. Don't remove any of the fruiting stems, just the leaves. And if you keep up with that, you're going to cut down on a lot of disease issues. Now I'm not going to get into, you know, the complete growing of tomatoes and all of the ways to fight disease. I have other videos about that. Go to the playlist, how to grow tomatoes. You're going to find how many tomato Tuesday videos did we do last year? A lot. They're all in there. So look for the subject you need. I'm going to be doing some more this year as well. And you're going to have every last bit of information you need. But these were, this was information specific to cherry tomatoes. So if you learned something, please give the video a thumbs up. I would really appreciate it. Subscribe if you haven't, and I'll see you next time.