Just a few (hopefully) quick questions

[Kingpin008]

Hey all - relative new guy here. Got a few questions that I hope ya'll can help me out with.

I'm hoping to grow a small container garden this coming spring - two tomato plants, one small row each of beets and cukes, and some pea plants.

I'd like to avoid building anything like an Earthtainer this first time around, for a few reasons, most important being the fact that my budget for this project is meager to say the least, and I'd like to avoid any unnecessary expenditures if at all possible.

So I'm wondering - how well can I expect to grow tomatoes in regular old five-gallon plastic pails? I'd make sure to drill holes for drainage, of course. I can get them for free from school (hooray culinary school!) so if they'll do the trick, that would be awesome.

Another reason I'm interested in using simpler, less elaborate containers is because due to a bad back, I'm hoping to build some sort of simple platform for all my containers and the less bulky, heavy equipment I have to lug up and down from time to time the better. I don't mind the extra work that more conventional containers may require - as a "baby gardener" I consider it part of the learning curve.

And lastly, some info on my growing conditions. From what I've read, my particular setup isn't exactly ideal for growing, so any advice/info/warnings you've got to offer about getting the best results is much appreciated.

I'm in the Mid-Atlantic (20 mins south of Baltimore)
Will be growing my garden on the side porch on the NW corner of my west-facing house. I have no idea how much sun it gets during the day in the Spring/Summer, but I feel like it's pretty decent. The porch has no roof, and three sides are made of lattice, which I figured I could use as support for the tomatoes, peas, and cukes.

The tomatoes I chose are San Marzano and Cherokee Purple, btw. One for sauces, one for sammiches. Hopefully they're a good starting place for neophytes.

Sorry for the novel, thanks in advance for the help!

[rnewste]

kingpin,

Yes, many folks here grow in 5 gallon buckets. There are several designs that have been discussed here on Tomatoville. Do a search on 5 gallon buckets, and I'm sure you will find Threads.

You can also make a "mini" EarthTainer with a wicking basket in one bucket, seated down into a second bucket that holds the water reservoir. This works well as watering needed in the Summer for plants in 5 gallon buckets can be a multiple times per day event.

Have fun!!

Raybo

[Kingpin008]

Mewste - Thanks very much for the quick reply - I'll search around and see what I can find.

[Worth1]

Have you thought about growing on the roof of your house?

Seriously if you have any luck at all with your garden this year you will get the gardening bug you will be thinking of all kinds of stuff.

I admire you for going to culinary school something I have wanted to do but not gonna quit my job to do it.

Besides I would just end up being a bad influence on the rest of the students.
Been cooking for something like 45 years.

I wish you could time how much sunlight you will have on that side of your house.
They need at least 6 hours of direct sunlight to do much of anything.

Worth

[Kingpin008]

The roof, eh? I said I had a bad back - you must be tryin' to kill me!

I hope I'll have at least some success. Even a single tomato or cuke would be fantastic. I just hope I'm not overcommitting myself - I have a tendency to do that sometimes. I think only limiting myself to a single plant of each tomato type, and one small row of each of the others should be manageable.

I LOVE culinary school. I've been back and forth to college a total of three times so far, and I've finally found something that I care about and am good at. Just about a year to go, then I can start working on getting things in order to open my bakery.

Six hours or so, eh? I think (hope) that shouldn't be a problem. Thanks for the advice!

[mdvpc]

Since this is your first garden, you may want to rethink your varieties. Your paste may get blossom end rot, and that is going to depress you. Cp is a great variety, but may be too much for you to handle the first year, especially in a 5 gallon container.

You may want to grow something like patio king, al-kuffa, bush goliath, new big dwarf or something like that for your sandwich tomato-these are all very good tomatoes. If you want a black tomato to start with, something like black cherry might be more successful for you. In fact, a line up of
patio king, black cherry and sungold could well be a nice successful first year for you.

Paste tomatoes are not as easy to grow, especially in a 5 gallon container because of the propensity for beer, especially for a new grower.

What I heard in your post was you want to be successful this first year.

I don't have any experience growing beets, but a row of cukes can be a lot of cukes. Something like spacemaster in a container or two should give you a lot of cukes.

Not trying to dissuade you from your tomato heaven, just help.

For watering issues, Worth is, as usual, right. You can ameliorate that some by using zebu to keep your containers from drying out too much.

[Kingpin008]

Mdvpc - All great info, thanks. Is CP too much to handle due to being a heavy producer, or just a finicky variety to raise properly?

Paste tomatoes are not as easy to grow, especially in a 5 gallon container because of the propensity for beer, especially for a new grower.

Beer? Like, tomatoes going off and fermenting on the vine, or something different?

You're right, I'd love to be successful my first year. If not, I won't be crushed though.

If you had to recommend one of the various types of tomatoes you mentioned as alternatives, which would it be? I don't need a super-heavy producing variety, just something that will keep me in a few tomatoes a week, and maybe some to pass on to my neighbor. The only reason I picked the cherokee purple is that a friend of mine sent me a huge package of seeds awhile back and that happened to be one of the cultivars in the mix.

And yeah, when I say a "row" of cukes, I mean three or four individual plants worth. Probably quite a few cukes, but I go through those suckers like crazy, lol. And I was planning on going with Spacemaster 80, btw.

I totally understand that you're not trying to kill my buzz - by all means, if you think I'm overshooting my capabilities, please tell me. I'm here to learn.

As for watering issues - I'm stuck at home a lot lately because of my back injury, so having something to do other than sit on my butt and watch Judge Judy is a welcome distraction.

If I can ask, what's Zebu? I googled it just now, and apparently it's some type of cattle, haha.

Thanks!

[Tom C zone 4/5]

King, I think a typo got this thread off track. BER (not beer) is an acronym for Blossom End Rot, this can trouble paste tomatoes at times.

I've had my best luck with medium slicers and cherrys in 5 gallon buckets.

Stupice is a smaller tomato/bigger cherry that I will encourage your trial of.

[Kingpin008]

Tom C - Aha, that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification. Stupice, eh? I'll add it to my notes. Much appreciated.

[mdvpc]

King

The word processing program changed ber to beer! Ber is blossom end rot. Lots of posts on this, so a search here will fill u in. Also changed zeba to zebu. It's an organic watering crystal- look at zeba.com.

Bush Goliath is a hybrid and it's good. Patio King is op, needs a small cage and is good. Al-Kuffa is an iraqi tomato-check out my thread on greenhouse 2010varieties in the undercover forum-it's early and good.

You may want to do a search for posts from other folks in your area, or go to a greenhouse near you and talk to them about varieties that do well in your area. I am in zone 8, and my growing conditions are different from yours.

Cp could do great for you. But I would start a new gardener with something smaller, earlier and prolific when they are starting out and using a 5 gallon container.

[Kingpin008]

MD - Gotcha. Makes a lot more sense now. I've got a ton of reading to do, but that's ok! Once again, thanks for the help!

[tam91]

I grow in containers, but bigger ones (18 gallon). For a black tomato, I might suggest Black Krim - it's really a favorite of mine. I love the Black Cherry also, as well as Sungold.

If someone more experienced than I say Black Krim won't like the buckets, oops...

[wordwiz]

Kingpin,

You might also think about a simple DWC hydroponic setup. A small pump, a net pot, a bit of hydroton or lava rocks and a piece of tubing and some Tomato-tone ferts and you would good to go. You might need to add nuits/water once a week or maybe twice in the dead of summer but you can somewhat control BER a bit better and your roots will have all the room they need to grow.

Mike

[mdvpc]

wordwiz

Great idea. Do you have any website that you can send us to for an illustration?