What variety are we talking about?

Some cherry tomato plant varieties are the largest tomato plants there is - well over 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide - and even 1 plant in a 10 gallon container wouldn't do well. Hard to believe 3 plants an inch apart would do well. Even the dwarf varieties require more space than that. The minimal recommendation for most any variety of tomato plant is 5 gallons per plant.

Soil brand is your choice but keep in mind that organic mixes only work in containers if you also add and keep established an active soil food web, active soil bacteria, so that the nutrients are available to the plants. Otherwise they are a waste of money in containers.

Dave.

What variety of Cherry? The plant size range of cherry variaties is huge. Super Sweet 100 is a monster and can easily get 10'+ high and also bush out wide. However small dwarf varieties like Red Robin barely get a foot high.

I agree with what has been posted. Unless you are an experienced gardener, I would suggest you not try to grow organically in containers at first. It can certainly be done but it can require more time, money and expertise. At least it sure did when I tried it!

Hello, sorry I should have specified. The tomatoes I have is black cherry, black plum, and sungold.

Good to know about the organic soil. How do I add those things needed?

I know sungold is a huge one. Even if the root space was ok, you cannot manage another plant growing next to it, to accommodate the foliage,

Seysonn

What size pots do I need for each then, if I should grow them in individual pots? I hear the regular size tomatoes should be 5 (does that include beefsteak or theirs should be bigger?). Can I put cherries (sungold as well) in maybe, 3? I just have to budget especially with the cost of soil.

I hear the regular size tomatoes should be 5 (does that include beefsteak or theirs should be bigger?

No, there is some basic misunderstanding about tomato plants here. The size of the fruit does NOT determine the size of the plant. As already mentioned many cherry-type plants are huge. Sungold is one of them. Black Cherry and Black Plum are too although not quite as big. Sungold plants are much bigger than beefsteak plants - easily 8-10 feet tall and 4-5 feet wide.

A 5 gallon container is the minimum recommended size for even the smallest plant and even then the odds of success are poor. It can be done with a great deal of extra work, extra feeding weekly and very careful watering preferably using an automated system. So no, you cannot use a 3 gallon except perhaps for something tiny like Red Robin.

A 10 gallon container does much better for most plants and even bigger is better. Personally I would never grow a Sungold in anything less than 15 gallons. I have done that and even then the plant is heavily stressed and requires extra work. It does well in 20 gallons.

If budget is limited then you really need to find some other varieties. There are many small and dwarf varieties that will work well in 5 gallons but the varieties you have listed will not do at all well and there is no way you could plant more than one in any container and expect results.

Also if budget is limited then using organic soils and all of the amendments and extra care that requires is a very unnecessary expense.

Dave

What I can do is get a bigger pot and grow less plants. Maybe I should've bought smaller varieties, but I didn't know about the size (newb). I should also mention that I am in NJ, so growing season is shorter. For the amount of time the plants were alive, they grew fine. If I had another couple months they probably would've been more stressed. I'll consider 10 or 15 gallons. Thanks for the input. I'm still open to more advice.

I am growing dwarves ONLY in containers this season. Unless I have ZERO in ground garden space, I would not plant anything bigger than a compact DET in container.

Seysonn

Yeah I am assuming you have seeds and were planning to grow these from seed indoors under lights? It is still so early to find store-bought transplants. So if you are limited to containers only why not buy other more container-friendly varieties - there are many of them - when the time comes. If you do you'll have 10x better results and at less cost. The ones you have listed just aren't container varieties.

Dave

digdirt is dead on- he usually is :)

I'm growing some dwarfs and dets in 5 gallon buckets this year- but as an experiment in stress testing rather than my main crop to test out the growth of some varieties. But I have some experience with containers and tomatoes already, and was careful to choose smaller plants. Some are large fruited, some small- but that really means nothing compared to plant size itself. And I'm only doing one plant per container too, I wouldn't try putting more than one into a container, even for an experiment.

On the flip side, in my main crop, one of the biggest plants being grown is a cherry tomato.

I experimented with three aggressive plants in a 4 gallon bucket, and successfully grew them for a long season. Everyone has different practices, so your mileage may vary. In my case the plants were in competition for root space and two crowded out the third and marginalized it, and it eventually died from the strangle hold the others made, but not before giving me some quite large tomatoes. The other two battled it out with each other. The one that fruited earlier pushed the fruiting back of the later one, and gave a nice harvest. After it knocked itself out, the later of the two beat it back to near dead, and churned out the biggest crop yet. All three were large fruited, very large indeterminate heirloom plants and together covered 40 square feet of ground in several layers of foliage, one made under 10% this area, the other about 25% and the third, over 60% of the area they grew into which was essentially a horizontal trellace.

So while my project may not be recommended, it is certainly possible to do, if you want to. My total yield probably was the same as a single monster plant in the bucket. The easy thing to overlook as mentioned by dig, is the watering frequency. In hot weather the bucket required 5 waterings daily or the plants would wilt. I gave them what they needed and they gave me tomatoes.

That said, I am experimenting with a new design this season with three indeterminate plants in a 7 gallon container, each at max distance from the other, but my main containerized plants will be in 10 gallon containers. I really don't know if either of this season's ideas will work, but I need to have a challenge, and as long as you have the time to give them attention when needed they have always responded for me. I am highly restricted for space, or I would use 18 gallon pots, 1 per plant. Good luck!

PC

PC, I also think that if you provide plants what they need (Moisture, nutrients) soil volume is not as a big issue, But doing it in practice requires a lot know how and hard work. That is why a bigger container offers a lot of convenience and peace of mind.

The other issue, as you have experimented, is accommodating the top growth. How much of an air space is there on top of a 5 gallon bucket ? Not much unless you have some structure to tie the top to it, like fence.

Yet another thing: There are many choices of dwarves and compact determinant as alternative to aggressive indets than can be manage much easier and with less work.

Seysonn

Digdirt, I already bought the seeds and watered them. It's still cold here so they're strapped to my lights. It may not be warm enough but I'm hoping. I have no choice now. Got the seeds, prepared them, now I gotta plant them. I wasn't thinking about container varieties, just flavor and yield (as I said, I'm a newb). I'll do my best with 15 gallon, 20 if I can work out my budget.

Shijitake, I use #15 nursery pots (hold about 13 gallons) for my indeterminates that I get free from my local nursery in their recycling pile. Smaller nursery pots for my dwarfs. This could cut down on your costs if you have a local garden center that does landscaping. They should have the used pots. I have had excellent results growing large indeterminates in containers. But, as mentioned by all, you need to water them daily, if not more and fertilize them weekly, if not more. And they need good support.

I already bought the seeds and watered them. It's still cold here so they're strapped to my lights. It may not be warm enough but I'm hoping.

Could you explain this more please. Have you done research on how to start plants from seed? What potting mix did you use? Did you plant ALL the seeds in the packet or what? "Strapped" to lights?

Dave

Thanks, jenniedhs, that's helpful.

digdirt, I only used less than half the packets to make sure at least 3 germinate. I did it the cheat way I learned in school, put them in a wet paper towel and put in a ziplock. I taped the ziplock to my lights (not the lightbulb itself, just the plastic cover. Usually it would be a sunny window but theyre too cold). Once they germinate I will put them in small pots til they get bigger.

Seysonn, I agree that there are just too many issues that crop up trying to grow one or more large indeterminates in a small container. Just because something can be done doesn't make it a bright idea. In my case the support was a trellace independent of the container so each plant was trained outward in a triangle and the lowest leaves in the container were all removed to allow good air flow and gave the impression of a single big "tomato tree".

The biggest issue in a small container is having free space for the roots not only to occupy, but also allow for diffusion of air. I started out with a great deal of space and you could pretty much figure out what was happening from the way each plant looked. With heavyweight plants is was a full 15-round match where one would start winning, fruit and then get weak and another would seize the initiative, probably strangling the predessor champ's roots and using them for soil to some degree so production was coordinated and nothing was accomplished more than if I had a single rootstock with three grafted varieties which I watered with equal frequency.

Once I went on vacation and rigged an automatic watering device for 10 days, but that was too out of sync since the water consumption varied by a factor of about two with weather and as you say a large container goes a long way to iron out these problems and make it bearable. It is not simply an issue of waste, but of drowning the roots on a cloudy day and they will rot.

jennie, wow, if I could find one of those free pot landscaping/nursery places with #15's!

shij, interesting about "strapping" if you can keep the temperature in a reasonable range...

PC

Thanks again for all the input. I will get either #15 pots or larger. I am going to plant one of each tomato I have. The seeds have sprouted! I am starting super early this year. Excited :)

For the record, I typically grow 1 sungold every year in an 18 gallon pot and it's just about right.

The whole gallon thing confuses me. I am HORRIBLE at math. HOPELESSLY SO. My biggest pot is 20 inches across the top. How many gallons is that? Is this the one you all mean by 10 or something gallons? The pot is about middle of thigh high on me and I'm 5'5".

Deeby!

Use this formula, being sure to use height & radii in inches (radius = 1/2 diameter):

V(gal) = π * h * (R²+R*r+r²) ⁄ 693

Luckily, someone else has made life easy:

Volume of a flower pot (inverted conic frustum volume calculator link),

For example plug in 10 inches (20 inch inside diameter) flowerpot that is 8 inches on the bottom (16 inch diameter), and 25" high assuming you don't wear too high heels when you garden, and you will see that's a 27 gallon pot ;-), which the calculator tells us is also 3.7 cubic feet and 2/3 of a barrel of oil LOL, among other stuff like liters and cubic kilometers

PC

Forum is dead tonight!

The original question was how many cherry tomatoes fit in a 10 gallon container?

Now the OP had a different interpretation of the question, but I just harvested mine last week and discovered 1,870 cherry tomatoes fit in a real 10 gallon container (15 gram cherry tomatoes, just over 1/2 ounce each).

Unless you squish them. Then you could fit up to 2,525 cherry tomatoes in a 10 gallon container.

But watch out you don't get a 10 "trade" gallon container. Those are about 30% smaller than real gallons. I find all the crazy numbers in the nursery pot industry hopelessly confusing too. Lucky we never used imperial gallons because they are even bigger.

PC

HUH?

Nitsua, LOL! Yes, each time I saw this thread title that's what I thought, like one of those carnival games of counting how many gumballs were in the jar to win a prize. I didn't think to calculate either until Deeby asked for a formula to convert her pot size to gallons which is sort of the same thing.

Deeby For a 20" top diameter pot, if you don't want to measure the height, bottom diameter and top diameter and get the exact gallons in the convenient online calculator, an estimate is that you have a sort of #20 or #25 pot, the height coming way up your thigh is quite tall. Most 20 inch pots are around 20 gallons, but the formula gives around 27 gallons since I guessed your "half way thigh high" is about 25 inches tall, but that was hard to work with since you could be wearing shoes, measuring the outer lip, or it could be sitting on a saucer, etc.

Because pots have different slants from top to bottom, it isn't enough just to measure the top diameter. Yours sounds closest to the #25 tall here which is shorter but a little wider so around 25 gallons sounds reasonable. You can compare it to commercial pot sizes at nursery pots also to get a really good idea of the gallons:

Nursery Pot Commercial Sizes

The other way to do it is to see if the company/product number is on the bottom of the pot and see if their website has it listed in gallons too. Most do. Volume is what is important to roots, however you wish to measure it, since containers come in all shapes, as long as they are reasonable.

PC

Deeby - give us the exact measurements on the pot and we can tell you how many gallons it is. Or you can just compare its size to a 5 (actually 4.5 gallons) gallon bucket for a close idea. Plus many will come with a "holds x quarts of potting mix" tags. That can tell you approx. how many gallon it is.

<My biggest pot is 20 inches across the top. How many gallons is that? >

The average 20" diameter pot is 5-6 gallons but there are many different shapes and heights so that is just an average. There aren't many, a few but not many, so-called "flower pots" that have that traditional flower pot shape that are big enough capacity for any tomato plants except the dwarfs and some of the small determinates. Tomatoes work best in deep, straight-sided containers that are sold/labeled in gallons.

Dave

Here's my confusion: I'm assuming that when you all talk about gallons you mean like a gallon of water? This pot could hold a gazillion of those !

A gazillion? I doubt that.:) But we are talking about dry gallons not liquid gallons. They aren't the same. So if your pot would hold a gazillion wet gallons it would only hold about 10 million dry gallons dry. 20 gallons liquid = 17 dry gallons

So give us the measurements.

I actually gave the pot away. I was using it as an example for what I was wondering/confused about. So I guess it was 17 dry gallons. It took about 1 1/2, 2 cubic foot bags of potting mix to fill it. It's on Amazon as Listo 20 inch resin pot. Just by seeing it I always thought it'd be great for an indet tomato. I had a Meyer lemon tree in it.

So plugging the dimensions listed on amazon for it into the formula you get approx. 13.2 dry gallons.

I can't imagine growing a Sungold in a pot. Mine got to be about 8 feet tall.

Thanks Dave ! How you guys do this math thing I can't imagine ! Anyway, mystery solved !

Let us settle at ~ nominal 20 gallons; Hehe.
Deeby said::

It took about 1 1/2, 2 cubic foot bags of potting mix to fill it.

1.5 ( 2 c.f) = 3 cf >>> -3x 7.5 x 0.83 = 18.7 dry gallons

Also Beeby said:

I actually gave the pot away

What ???

Deeby, .. you've got to find that pot and measure it accurately LOL

Seysonn