Modern urban living should not deprive you of the joys of home gardening. If you enjoy eating vegetables, you will derive even greater satisfaction in consuming your own homegrown vegetables. Growing tomatoes in containers has always been popular among home gardeners. It gives apartment dwellers a chance to own a garden despite living in small spaces.
Have you ever wondered why do people grow tomatoes in a container even when they have a yard or garden? Well, the answer is simply for better control, flexibility and convenience.
Tomato plants grow well on warm temperature, adequate sunlight and good quality drainage system. Occasional fertilizers add a booster to the plant's nutrients and promote the production of big, juicy tomatoes. Similar to planting in the ground, it is advisable to grow tomato plants indoor carefully and transplant them only when they are strong enough. In transplanting, you should bury as much of the plant stem as possible. This promotes good formation of the roots, which results in an excellent base foundation for your tomato plant.
Growing vegetables in containers allow you to control the state of your growing medium. Once you have discovered your success secrets through your gardening experiments, you can just rinse and repeat it in all your future gardening projects. You can choose total soil-free gardening, organic gardening or a mixture of both. A recommended recipe for good container gardening soil mixture for vegetable growing is 40% compost, 40% peat moss, and 20% perlite.
One of the advantages of having a container garden is that it frees you from weeding and messing with garden dirt. However, container vegetables will require extra care in watering and fertilizing. Tomatoes grown in containers have constrained root coverage and their growth is limited by the amount of water and nutrients in the container. During summer, you may even need to water your container vegetable plants up to twice daily to prevent it from drying up. Give your water thirsty tomato plants ample water and you can expect a delightful harvest.
If you are looking for an easy way out to watering your tomato plants, you can install automated drip irrigators for your containers. The installation is considerably uncomplicated and the price is not costly. The approximated price of an automated drip irrigation system set up ranges between $50 to $100. You could be easing yourself of a lot of hassles if you have a lot of container plants to take care of. It is surely a worthy investment that will pay off well in the long run.
One of the methods frequently used to lessen water evaporation is to apply mulch to your containers. This also aids in keeping weeds down if you are using compost or garden soil. Both pine bark mulch and black plastic mulch work great.
When your tomato plants start to blossom, it is time to increase the fertilizers to twice its usual amount. This helps to encourage fruit production and results in better yields. Always keep your fertilization rate constant.
Having your tomato plant blossoming with delicious-looking tomatoes is a wonderful feeling. However, it is advisable to pick your tomato fruits once they are ripe as this encourages the plant to produce a new fruit.
Growing tomatoes in containers is undeniably a very flexible and productive gardening practice. Be free to exercise your creativity with your container gardens, as tomatoes are generally hardy plants.
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