Inside small container

[coloken]

I have a couple of tomatoes, Russian red and new big dwarf, inside in small pots. I don't know the pot size, maybe 2-3 gal, Smaller that a 5 gal bucket. They are doing great with several golf ball sized tomatoes. I doubt the small pots can keep them going. Is there any way to help? prune the heck out of them? Can I start feeding them very carefully with fertilizer? Re-potting is out of the question.
KennyP

[lakelady]

Do you really think that is too small for a dwarf plant? Mine are probably 4 gallon size and I think one is a 3 gallon, so I'm hoping they will be happy enough with those sizes because I can't repot either...

[coloken]

They are just doing so great that I want to keep it up. I will be carefull to not over fertilize. I may not even try. I think a lot of people kill their plants with over done things.
BTW: i think that 2 rugose dwarfs 3 foot high in the window make great looking house plants. Some might not, but I like them, and its my house.

[lakelady]

I would agree, those dwarfs are very handsome plants, and honestly, they do sort of look like houseplants in the window!

[afrance30]

The largest container I use inside right now is a 2 1/2 gallon- 3 gallon. I've done very well with containers of this size. I rarely prune, and when I do it's because one plant starts hogging the light, not because of the container size. I rarely fertilize. In fact my indoor garden hasn't had any nutrients added in 3-4 weeks.

I abuse my plants, and for some reason they thrive very well like this. I plant in Wonder Soil mix and water a couple times a week at the most. I don't use natural light though since I grow down in my basement, it's all artificial light. Not sure if that makes a difference?

I think your plants will do ok in those containers.

[Heritage]

Kenny,

My experience is the same as afrance30. The rootball in a 3 gallon container is plenty large enough to support the growth of a tomato plant. I plant all of my greenhouse plants in .4 cu. ft. of soil mix. (a 2 cu. ft. bag of potting soil is divided equally among 5 containers) Most I prune just to keep things manageable, but many I don't. I think your approach to fertilizing is smart - it is better to underdo it a little than to overdo it, especially in the winter, under low-light conditions.

Steve

[Heritage]

Originally Posted by afrance30

I abuse my plants, and for some reason they thrive very well like this.

Ha! I agree, use tough love when raising tomatoes. They also taste better when abused.

[coloken]

Originally Posted by Heritage

Kenny,

My experience is the same as afrance30. The rootball in a 3 gallon container is plenty large enough to support the growth of a tomato plant. I plant all of my greenhouse plants in .4 cu. ft. of soil mix. (a 2 cu. ft. bag of potting soil is divided equally among 5 containers) Most I prune just to keep things manageable, but many I don't. I think your approach to fertilizing is smart - it is better to underdo it a little than to overdo it, especially in the winter, under low-light conditions.

Steve

Thanks Steve,
What plants? Are we talking about. Full sized tomatoes? And how big do they get?
And my thanks to afrance for his comments.
KennyP

[Heritage]

Kenny,

Any tomato plant I've tried to grow in a container has done well. My early unpruned container plants were unmanageable, now I keep them pruned to 1 or 2 stems.

The photo on the left shows a large cherry variety "Casino Chips" pruned to two leaders. I striped the foliage from the center plant to show the growth habit, and you can see by the plants on either side there is no stress on these 7 foot plants. The pots are only half full of soil.

The plant on the right is from my sister's garden. It is also growing in .4 cu ft. of soil. It is an unpruned Dwarf Mr. Snow.

If your container plants are growing rapidly you will need to water and fertilize them more often than field grown plants. Peak season I water daily and fertilize weekly. But indoors you will be doing much less of both.

If your plants look good now, just keep doing what you're doing and don't change anything!

Steve

[lakelady]

ah, the abuser ! ha! Good to know others are growing in smaller containers too. I was kinda worried that mine might be too small as the plants got bigger.

[tgplp]

Just saying the same thing everyone else has said: I grow tomatoes indoors a lot in three gallon containers or LESS and the tomatoes do great! the plants may be smaller, but just as healthy. I've grown Micro Toms in less than gallon pots (pots about the size you would grow, say, a mini African violet or other small houseplant) and they produce about two dozen tomatoes! (that's two crops!) so yes, you should be fine. Don't worry.

Taryn

[Catherine+two]

I used to read the forum about growing peppers over on GW (before I decided my climate was just too cool to make it fun), and a common discussion this time of year is bringing your peppers in for the winter. They weren't all trying to keep the plants producing, some just wanted to keep them alive as the tender perennials they are, to plant out again in the spring. Along the line of bonsai, this involves digging up the field-grown plant, washing the soil out of the roots and root-pruning, then pruning the top growth back to match the root mass, and finally planting in a smallish pot for the winter.

Okay, that defeats the purpose of bringing plants inside to keep producing. I did root a couple of plants and pot them up in small pots, and I have already pruned them back once--all to see if I could get a head start on my long-season (totally unreasonable for my mountain climate) stuffer tomatoes. But the plants I moved into my dad's greenhouse room just got pruned back to remove old woody growth and sad-looking foliage. They were growing in pots anyway, as they are easier to keep watered that way in our continuing drought, and they can be grown under the house eaves to protect them from hail. Anyway, I pruned half the foliage off and gave them all a dilute dose of liquid fertilizer a week before I brought them in. I didn't repot them at all, or add more potting soil, even though their soil level has settled since I planted them in the spring. Next summer/fall I think I will repot and add soil to half, just to see how they react to that. Nevertheless, I do see periodic pruning during the winter as part of keeping the plants healthy in a smallish pot.

I had four Amber Colored (my saved seed has segregated into short semi-determinate plants (1 ft tall most of the summer, but almost 2 ft now, and COVERED with tomatoes) and taller semi-determinate plants (2 1/2 ft tall most of the summer, but now 3 ft with SOME toms and flowers)) and two Maritime Pink (with flowers), all in 3-gal pots. One of the short Amber plants is actually in the kitchen, and my Italian-Sicilian/American dad keeps it picked, so it's hard to keep up with how prolific it is, but he likes it and hasn't asked me to move it to the basement. The funny thing is, I had decided to save seeds only from the taller Amber plants, as they were easier to pick and plenty prolific during our cool summer. My dear son and veggie-gardening partner preferred the short plants, so we now have a pill bottle of those seeds, too, labeled "Ricky's Amber". It turns out that in the greenhouse, his plants are the ones pumping out the fruit so far. We'll have to see how they do through the rest of the winter, but I find it interesting that changing the growing situation can so totally change which plant does best.

I knew the Maritime Pink were probably a bad fit for the winter gardening project, but DS didn't want to see them left behind. They are now leggy and have ripened only one tomato since they were brought in a month ago. We'll be looking for something red or pink and dwarf for next year.

Catherine

[coloken]

Interesting comments Catherine. We don't know for sure about anything till we try it. My experience with indoor tomatoes are very small fruits. More and more, I am thinking light and more light. That other things are not as important as I thought, I have a hoy tomato plant from a cutting that has a bad spot next to the window. I swear that it grew 4 inches since yesterday---trying to get over into the light. 3 to 4 foot tall and no buds. Just leggy growth.
KennyP