You need to decide if you want a full size tomato or the small cherry tomatoes. Do you want tart or sweet?

Like me, you are in a climate that is not entirely well suited to growing tomatoes......we simply do not get hot enough in summer for many varieties to develop and ripen properly before the weather starts getting cold. Planting in containers helps a lot, as you can move the containers to take advantage of maximum sunlight and reflected heat. And container soil heats up faster than ground soil does, which also helps.

But I'd still recommend you focus on short season or very cold tolerant varieties to get the best results. This includes most of the cherry varieties and ones like 'Oregon Spring', 'Early Girl', 'Stupice', 'Momotaro', 'Glacier' and 'Manitoba'. Unfortunately, that excludes most of the heirlooms and beefsteak types - they just fail to produce well in our cool summers.

Most of these are indeterminate varieties, meaning they continue to grow and produce flowers and fruits as long as the weather is suitable. And they grow big and with a big root system so a need good sized container. I use 20G black nursery pots, each with its own support cage. Since these are short season crops, any decent potting soil will work for the few months of growth. You water as often as necessary - hard to get more specific than that, as heat and rain and other factors (including the soil used) will influence the frequency. I fertilize every other week with a good liquid fertilizer at full strength - others use a more diluted rate with more frequent applications.

With some 25 years of growing tomatoes in containers in the PNW, I have almost never encountered any disease issues and not too many insect problems. Deer and raccoons are my biggest problems :-))

In our area and growing in containers, I recommend you purchase started plants. Growing from seed involves too much effort for the quantity needed. Generally, it is not suggested to plant them outside until the nighttime temperatures hit at least 50F, which doesn't often happen here until around the beginning of June....that's why we need short season varieties :-))

Hope this helps. And if you have a greenhouse available, then your options widen considerably!!

You can either buy your plants from nursery or you can start them from seeds, which I recommend to reduce risk of bringing home diseased plants.

Starting seeds:
You want to know what is your "last frost date", this is the date when you are no longer risking frost in your area. Start seeds indoor around 6 weeks before this date. This will get you a healthy seedling large enough to transplant into the big pot once it's warm enough outside. You can start seeds in a sterile potting mix, don't water too much. As the seedling grows, you can begin to water with a weak diluted fertilizer. When you first bring it outdoor, try to not give it too much direct sunlight in the first week while they're adopting.

Choosing the type of containers:
There are many different container growing methods. My favorite type right now is "fabric grow bags". Grow bags have very good aeration and drainage ability which allows the plant roots to grow very well and reduces the risk of over watering, which is a common mistake for new gardeners. And they are affordable. If you want something nicer looking, wine barrels and terracotta pots allows better drainage and aeration compared to typical plastic containers. There is also self wicking containers which have a water reservoir that holds several gallons so it water the container by itself over time and is low maintenance, such as City Pickers and Earthbox.

Growing medium:
For containers, you want to use "potting mix". The potting mix should be not too heavy and drains well. Do not buy "potting soil". Some brands of potting mix are very water retentive and acidic since they are mostly peat moss, so you need to add dolomite lime to balance the pH. I try to find a potting mix that have pine barks in them which improve drainage.

There are many ways to go about making your container mix. Some people are completely against using compost in containers and uses 100% potting mix. I personally use a mix of 75% potting mix and 25% compost in plastic pots. Though lately with fabric grow bags, I go up to 50/50. Poor quality compost can have disease or herbicide contamination.

Fertilizers:
To keep it basic, you mainly don't want to feed tomato too much with fertilizers high in nitrogen. Too much nitrogen will produce lots of leaves and little flowers. Two main type of fertilizers are water based which are fast acting or organic slow release. Personally go for slow release, there are many brands to choose from such as Ecoscraps, Espoma, Jobe's, or whatever is popular locally. Sometimes if a plant is deficient I might give it water fertilizer for a quick boost.

You don't want to abuse the plant with too much fertilizers which would be detrimental to it's growth. Many synthetic fertilizers have salt and using them too often can be bad for plants. Just follow the instruction on the box.

Other than that you want to buy a tomato cage or trellis to help it grow.

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The only kind I have heard of is Beef Steak

There are many varieties with different sizes, colors and flavors. If you look up tomato seeds catalog you will be overwhelmed. For starter, you want to grow something standard and popular that is known to be productive to give a higher success rate. Beefsteak is a good start. This is the most discussed aspect of growing tomatoes, so you will get all kind of different recommendations.

I recommend Jaune Flamme. It is an orange salad sized tomato that is very early and prolific, but you will have to start from seeds.

How long does it take to grow until you can eat it.

It depends on the variety, how healthy the plant is, how much sun it gets and many other factors. Each tomato variety have a different time it takes to bear fruit. Look at the "days to harvest", this is the estimate days from when you transplant the seedling until you get the first ripe fruit. Some variety are early as 45days, these are usually cherry tomatoes, larger sized tomatoes tend to take longer up to 100 days or more. So it's important to choose the variety that will give you harvest before it's too cold.

What kind of insects are likely to attack?
Each region can have slight variation, but the main ones are moth caterpillars. I recommend "bt" sprays which will kill them and is an organic approved method, a popular brand is Thuricide. Here in the south we have lots of whiteflies which sometimes carry "yellow leaf curl virus", once a plant catches this virus it's incurable.

What insects or diseases should I watch for?
There are lots of different tomato diseases. Having a good draining grow mix is key to minimize it imo. It is generally agreed that tomatoes much more likely to get disease if their leaves are constantly wet, so water the base of the plant, not the leaves. Pruning can be very important, you want to prune the bad yellowing or diseased leaves in the bottom of the plants as it grows, this let more air pass through the bottom.

One issue you may get is "bottom end rot". This is cause by the plant lacking calcium, but actually due to pH issue and uneven watering, where the mix is too wet or too dry for period of time.

Do the flowers mean that is going to turn into a tomato?
Tomato flowers are self pollinating, just a bit of wind or shaking the plant will allow the pollinating to happen. Not all flowers will become fruits, there is an optimal temperature range. Too cold or too hot, diseases, lacking nutrients are some of the things that will prevent fruit forming.

Of course, there are advantages in 8b, in that although it may not get very hot for you, it doesn't get very cold either. So your growing season may be longer than in other places. Also, your tomatoes will fruit continuously, because where you are, it never gets hot enough to shut off the fruiting. My tomato growing season is March-June. After that, the heat shuts fruiting down.

Be advised that if you are going to grow in containers, there are some important rules. (1) The container should be BIG. Ideally 5 gallons or more for full-sized fruit. (2) Use good quality container soil. Don't just fill the containers with soil from the ground. (3) You MUST fertilize. Natural processes for plant nutrition aren't active in containers. (4) Your containers should get at least 6 hours of sunlight per day. Don't try to grow under trees.

Beyond that, you really should connect with your local gardeners for how-tos. I just googled "tomatoes" and "Vancouver" and saw a lot of great info. If you have neighbors who garden, talk to them. If you have specific questions, do come here.

I'd avoid using any dry or organic ferts for container grown tomatoes. They tend to be pretty ineffectual in providing required nutrients as potting soil does not contain the necessary populations of soil organisms to convert these types of ferts into plant usable forms. It is very difficult to be both a successful container gardener and an organic one - the processes are not very compatible.

btw, potting soil and potting mix are terms used interchangeably and generally refer to a soil-less mix formulated specifically for growing in 'pots' or containers, hence the name "potting" soil. What you want to avoid is 'garden planting mix', which is really just an amendment for inground soils. And keep any compost to a minimum as it adversely affects drainage and aeration. It's OK if a very short season planting, but it will need to be dumped and replaced the next year.

And while all input can be valuable, just be aware that our specific little corner of the universe presents climate issues that are uncommon anywhere else and so when growing anything here, it is best to rely primarily on local advice :-)

Hi Diane,

What part of BC do you live in? I grow lots of tomatoes in North Vancouver. However, I mostly grow in raised beds as I find growing in pots much more difficult. But if you use a large pot and can keep up with watering and fertilizing as mentioned above you will likely be successful. I'd encourage you to come back here when you start seeing transplants available at the local garden centers and ask any questions you might have then. In terms of general advice I don't have much to add to what gardengal already said. For plants that aren't protected from rain, late blight can be an issue some years, but containers do provide the advantage of being able to move your plants under cover when needed..

Big pots, 7 gal or so. Nice enough potting mix with perlite and peat moss (should be quite fibrous looking ideally). Start with little fertilizer and ramp up once flowering starts, feed often. Natural fetilizers can be used no problem but you should complement with a complete mineral one (with calcium and microelements and high potassium) to make sure all elements are in there. A fairly high amount of total fertilizer is needed in pots for good taste and production. Don't be afraid to water, once they start getting big it's almost impossible to overwater.

It will take roughly 4 months from seed to eat if all goes well, so not a small amount of time. Start the seeds inside about 1-1.5 months before you think you can plant them outside.

You're right by Tatiana. Check out her database website and store. If I were in Canada, I would shop there, but I'm not. Anyhow, some of the varieties I might recommend looking into include these (in alphabetical order; a lot of the ones I didn't star are available only in Canada—so consider yourself lucky there):

(I’ll star the ones I’ve grown, and say how they did for me. Keep in mind that the same varieties may do better and/or worse for other people.)

• *Chocolate Pear: 2016 and 2017; actually much earlier than the 70 days listed; can be very sweet and prolific; very small fruit; tastes good
• *Clear Pink Early: 2017; Got some medium-sized fruit; I’m not sure if it was this one or Rosabec that I liked more, but one of them tasted better to me.
• *Cosmonaut Volkov: 2017; Got some medium-sized fruit; much later than advertized. It wasn’t remarkable to me, but it was okay.
• *Early Girl F1: my family has grown it many times (2014 and before); Prolific and very early. Great taste. The F2s I grew weren’t as prolific or early.
• *Early Wonder: 2017; I got a few small tomatoes.
• *Galapagos Island (Solanum cheesmanii): 2015 (ground) and 2017 (container); Very early; prolific; small cherry size
• *Gold Nugget: 2017 (container); Thick-walled cherries with good taste, but almost mealy.
• *Husky Cherry Red F1: 2014; standard-sized cherries; very early and prolific; small plant that gradually gets larger; splits easily; the F2+ didn’ split easily for me, and they were sweeter than the F1
• *Manitoba: 2017; excellent tomato; nice flavor; decent productivity; decent sized fruit
• *Matina: 2016 and 2017; Did very well for me in 2016 when I watered it a lot and had it caged (prolific, very early, very large plant; great taste); it had more flavor in dry conditions in 2017, but it didn’t get much fruit in them.
• *Mountain Princess: 2016 and 2017; produced more and better-tasting fruit in with less watering in 2017, but it was early both years. One of the best-tasting tomatoes I’ve tried, in 2017.
• *New Yorker: 2017; similar to varieties like Manitoba and Mountain Princess, but the plant was smaller for me, I think; my niece liked the taste a lot
• *North Dakota Earliana: 2017; I got a few small tomatoes (but the plant was in the shade of some current bushes); the first several fruits were seedless
• *Oroma: 2016 and 2017; fairly early and parthenocarpic; the fruit can be as large as a full-sized Roma. Some BER. Tolerates some shade.
• *Pink Berkeley Tie Dye: 2016 and 2017; did much better with less watering in 2017 (early, earlier, and much more prolific; bigger fruit); in 2016, it just got a few fruit that started to ripen some time after the first frost.
• *Roma: This is one of the more prolific, space-saving tomatoes out there; not early, but early enough. By 'Roma', I mean the actual variety called Roma (I don’t mean a Roma-shaped tomato; believe it or not, they don’t all taste, feel, or act the same, let alone prefer the same conditions). It has a lot of fruit at the end of the season when it’s cold. Make sure you get an early enough start on it. Watch out for BER.
• *Rosabec: got some medium-sized fruits; I forgot whether I preferred this one or Clear Pink Early.
• *Sasha’s Altai: 2017; excellent taste; it produced maybe a few tomatoes a day after it got going. Smaller size than advertized. Early.
• *Siletz: 2016; crop failure (the plant got at least one or two fruits, but other plants smothered it, and I never got to taste the fruits); parthenocarpic
• *Snow Fairy: 2017; nice, round fruit (probably too big to be a cherry, but maybe not) with decent taste and texture; dwarf; it didn’t get lots of fruit, but it might for some people
• *Sub Arctic Plenty: 2017; awesome plant; not early this year, but prolific, with nice fruits with good market potential by the look and feel of them; very thick walls
• *Sweet Orange Cherry: 2016 and 2017; one of my earliest tomatoes in 2017; great taste; very prolific; big, vigorous, vining plant
• 0-33
• AHLO
• Alaskan Gold
• Alpine
• Burpee Gloriana
• Canabec Rouge
• Cougar Red
• County Agent
• Deviz
• Dina
• E. H. House
• Early Glee
• Early Rouge
• EM Champion
• Esterina F1
• Farthest North
• Fireball
• Frosty F. House
• Gruntowy
• June Pink
• Kalinka
• Lee Williams
• Li Cun
• Lime Green Salad
• Mac Pink
• Northern Delight
• Novcerkasskij 416
• Ondraszek
• Orange Minsk
• Orange-1
• Rozovye Gryozy
• Saladmaster
• Santiam
• Saraev Bezrassadnyi
• Saraev Druzhnyi
• Saraev Otbor
• Saraev Stoikiy
• Saraev Svetloplodnye
• Sheyenne
• Sub Arctic Maxi
• SunGold F1
• SunSugar F1
• Superbec
• Twenty Ounce
• Ultrabec
• Volgogradskiy 323
• Vzryv
• Wheatley's Frost Resistant
• Wilford
• Yorkbec

Not all the varieties I mentioned are likely good for containers.

Also, be sure to use large enough containers for the variety. If you only have small containers, you might want to try varieties like Round Robin and Tiny Tim. Otherwise, use at least 5 gallons of soil (you'll probably want more). You can get cheap 10 to 18 gallon moving totes at Walmart; they make good containers (although cold winters can make plastic brittle over time).

Flowers don't always turn into fruit; more of them should turn into fruit in ideal conditions. In 90+° F. varieties may not set fruit if they're not heat-tolerant.

I am going to assume that starting from seed may be too much for your first entry in tomato growing, in that case I would recommend that you grow Early Girl if you can find plants locally, they grow well for everybody as far as I know and reasonably tasty. I regularly grow cool weather tomatoes and the varieties that I would recommend would be Siletz and Glacier, but plants may not be available in your area. If you do want seeds I have many, many varieties I could share, I could send you some if you message me. BTW, I note that your message option is not enabled in your profile, you might want to enable this if you want other members to be able to message you.