doebuttons

What varieties of tomatoes are you growing? Determinates don't require the kind of support indeterminates do.

I hope you aren't planning to put all forty plants into six buckets! They'll do better one to a container that size. Make sure you have holes drilled for drainage.

The best soil I've found is Fafard or ProMix BX for container growing of veggies. They already have perlite and a slight amount of fertilizer -- or at least the ProMix has a small amount of fertilizer. I think the Fafard also does. You can also make your own planting soil, but it requires you to get several bags of ingredients and mix them in the right proportions. I'm lazy, and my plants have done quite well.

Can you put your supports outside the buckets? With the weight of the plants and the small footprint of the buckets, they can easily topple over when the plants get large if you put a stake in the planting soil. Well, unless you run the stake through the bottom of the bucket into the earth. I've done it the easy way -- I tied my tomato plants growing in containers to 8' lengths of cattle panel held up by stakes in the earth, though I had them out in the open where they could get sunlight.

There are many kinds of tomato supports people use. Don't buy those dinky ones (3-footers) from the garden centers if you're growing indeterminates. They're adequate for bush tomatoes. Do a GardenWeb search on tomato cages. You'll find lots of ideas.

Potting mix will be easiest. Avoid using just topsoil. Perlite would help with drainage but a good mix should have that (or vermiculite) in it.

I must water everyday here unless its cloudy and cool.

Home depot. Buy a short roll (50ft) of concrete reinforcing wire. Cut it to the circumference you need to just slip over the outside of the pots.

You might also place a rock or brick in the bottom of the pot to keep it from blowing or toppling later when the plants are bigger.