Albert's Greenhouse

I finally got around to hanging the tomatoes this Saturday - before they got too big to fit through the little holes in the bottoms of the new buckets. A huge bag of potting soil, amended with an entire pound of slow-release fertilizer ( osmocote ), a few shovels full of perlite and a few shovels full of vermiculite, filled four 5-gallon plastic buckets which I had prepared last week.

Last year, I used a chicken manure/vermiculite/potting soil mixture which was a nearly total failure - the plants did not grow very quickly, I think due to lack of certain nutrients. This year, I am heading back towards my original mix of potting soil, slow release fertilizer, and perlite, with the addition of some vermiculite to even out the water content a bit. Blossom end rot and splitting on certain tomatoes has always been a problem for me with this setup. Blossom end rot is a calcium related problem, in that calcium deficiencies at the fruit end of things is the proximate cause, but it's really usually a water supply and demand problem related to there being too much plant and not enough root or water to support the aforementioned plant. The splitting of tomatoes is usually due to uneven water supply. Both of these problems are fairly obviously because 5 gallons is not really enough dirt to support a huge fruiting tomato plant. The vermiculite in the soil mix is an attempt to get a little more even water concentration in the soil.

The buckets each have a 1.5" hole drilled in the bottom with a hole saw, and a wooden brace mounted between the handle attachments on the top. They've been spray-painted, and the plastic handle guard has been moved aside in preparation for handing from my tomato arbor. The tomato plant is unpotted and then placed in the bottom of the bucket, with its top protruding out the bottom. The bucket is set temporarily on a two gallon pot in order to prevent crushing the tomato plant as soil is added. About 5" of soil is added, and then the tomato is re-positioned so that less of the stem is sticking out. Soil is then added to the top, tamped down, and topped off. Taking off the seed leaves of the tomato starts and planting them with a large amount of stem below ground is supposed to help with root formation - tomatoes will root from just about any part of the stem that is wet or in contact with the ground.

Because the tomatoes start out as small plants in huge pots, I don't water them much at first. As the plants grow up, more water is added, until they are basically sucking the pots dry every day, at which point some pinching or pruning is probably in order.

I don't believe that I get great yields from this method. I use it mostly because it's pretty space efficient, and it avoids having tomatoes rotting on the ground. It's less work than trellising. Plus - it makes people stare and ask questions.

I often grow beans or cucumbers out the tops of the buckets - planting those will be the next task. These no doubt contribute to my problems with water in the buckets, but they do shade the tops of the buckets from the worst of the summer sun, and they grow and produce even more vegetables in an admittedly limited area.