Let’s say you would love to be able to grow your own tomatoes, but you live in an apartment building or some other place where you don’t have your own garden.
Here’s good news: you don’t have to a piece of ground you can call your own to enjoy all the benefits of growing tomatoes at home – tomatoes that will taste far better than any you are likely to finding a store, and probably will be healthier, too.
You can grow tomatoes indoors in a container, and if you chose a suitable variety to plant and follow the necessary steps carefully, obtain just as good results as you would in an outdoor garden.
Advantages of growing in containers
Apart from the obvious advantage of being able to grow without a garden, growing tomatoes in a container has other advantages as well.
As a rule of thumb, tomato plants require a minimum of six hours sunlight a day to thrive. Not always will you find that one fixed spot gets that amount of sunlight every day. But if you are growing in containers, you can move your pots or whatever containers you are using from one place to another at different times throughout the day, taking advantage of whatever spot happens to be receiving the most sun at that particular time.
Another advantage of growing in containers rather than the ground is that you plants will be free of the inevitable weeds!
While most varieties of tomatoes will grow adequately in pots or other containers, some will thrive better than others. Probably your most important consideration will be the size of the finished fruit, for very large tomatoes will be too cumbersome to be practical.
Any of the varieties that belong to the large category known as Determinate tomatoes should be small enough to convenient, with their plants usually growing to a maximum of two small feet in height. If you work with smaller tomatoes, you are also less likely to be stuck with more fruit than you can handle!
Selecting the right kind of pot
Another advantage of choosing a smaller variety of tomato to grow in containers is that they will require less water. This is an important consideration, because keeping the soil moist in a pot can be challenging. But this task will be much easier if you choose the right kind of pot to start with.
Probably your best choice is a standard terra cotta pot that provides enough room for the roots to grow. Make sure that the pot has drainage holes at the bottom that enables excess water to escape, as an excessive accumulation of water will cause rotting of the roots. A layer of rock at the bottom of the pot will also be helpful in ensuring efficient drainage.