Tomatoes are delicious nutritious foods and a lot of people love planting them in their gardens for their beautiful appearance as well.
They are quite versatile and you can easily choose from different varieties. These can be grown from everywhere. Tomato plant varieties are quite simple to plant. Here we discuss about growing tomatoes in the bags, and you can easily take care of them.
Growing tomatoes in Grow bags is a great when you’re short of land or you just want to try something new. With a few points in mind, you’ll take care of a few things and get your organic tomato supply, which taste deliciously sweet and juicy.
However, while planting tomatoes you must use the best bag with appropriate size. Different tomato plant varieties grow well in bags and are highly nutritious.
Table of Contents
What Are Growing Bags?
It’s quite simple to find many kinds of growing bags in market that can be chosen. However, if you’re not interested in buying bags from the market, you can instead use a bag of potting soil and compost.
The Methods for Growing Tomatoes in Grow Bags
Two ways are present through which you can easily grow tomatoes inside grow bags. You can either purchase a good quality grow bag or simply make your own. Both these methods are present with their own benefits and negatives. Let’s get deeper into usage of grow bags.
Using Grow Bags
The concept of grow bags for tomatoes was great. These were neat, convenient and effective. You just have to pole drainage holes in your bag, and cut holes on top and then plant through them. The bag is effective in stopping water loss through evaporation.
Only drawback here was watering. A way for solving it was variant of old ring-culture method. Another solution was to grow watering pots for bags. These were inserted in the bag and water was poured through them.
With time, commercial pressure reduced the quality and volume of the compost inside the bag. Nowadays lots of bags are of about 35 to 40 litres volume only. This is the minimum for successful growth of tomatoes.
In the hot weather through fully grown plants, the little bags require three times watering in a day for moisture compost. Here the best answer would be to get better volume for the compost.
To get the best possible use of grow bags you need to:
Get a Good Quality Grow Bag
Get a good quality grow bag from nursery, nearby store and also through online stores. 5 best types of grow bags are available:
- Winner Outfitters Bags. The bags are fine fabrics, which helps in standing bags. Size can be about 3-10 gallons. These work great for growing and filling tomatoes.
- Plantmate Bags. They’re a fine choice to have aerated fabric. The fabric works well for proper air circulation. These are little bigger compared to the first. They’re available in 1 to 15 gallons size. They’re also available with handles.
- Vivosun Bags. These are the thickest options. However, still they’ve got the ability of flowing air. The size is same like the 247Garden, around 1 to 30 gallons with handles.
- 247 Garden Grow Bags. These are great bags for growing. The size can range around 1 to 30 gallons. As because of the size, they are also quite versatile for usage. They can have handles for holding and changing the bag position.
- Honest Outfitters Bags. The ideal size for such grow bags would be around 3 to 5 gallons. Also you need to have handles with alerted fabric for better air flow. The air flow is quite good for the plant roots.
Next Steps in Using Grow Bags For Your Tomato Plants
You have to add a few clay pebbles at the base of clay pebbles. When the compost is fine and available with well percentage of drainage, there wouldn’t be any requirement of adding pebbles in tomato growing bag.
Now add some soil in the bag. Also, you can pour compost in your bag. It is highly recommended to have good compost. Good compost can be bought from stores or it is possible to produce own compost.
Shake bag to loosen the compost. Make sure to not have compact soil inside the growing bag.
People using drainage holes bags shouldn’t follow this step. Poke a few holes at the bottom with scissors. The holes are great for excessive water release.
Place grow bag where you want it to. Here we’re growing tomatoes and tomatoes grow well in sunlight. So you must have a place with abundant sunlight. Grow bag can be put up in balcony and roof as well.
Plant a healthy seedling in the grow bag. Form some space for seedling by scooping the compost out and then plant it.
Water your plant frequently. Make sure to maintain adequate moisture.
For support you can use a rope or make wood trellis.
Ideal Bag Size for Growing Tomatoes
Tomato plantations bloom best in around 15 to 16 cm (8 inch) to 14 inch (30 cm or larger) the grow bags work well for tomato plantations.
It is great to have minimum 10 to 15 diameters grow bags and pots that are great for Tomato Plants. The depth needs to be around 8 to 12 inches.
At least 8 to 10 inch or 5 to 7 gallon grow bag is ideal for all varieties of tomatoes. Although some varieties of tomatoes can be grown in only 6 to 8 inch or 1 gallon of grow bags or pots. In fact, it is possible to grow 3 tomato plants in 7-inch plastic bags.
It still has chances of surviving in hot summer months and fruit in next season. Thus, you must be hoping for best.
Various tomato plant varieties can be grown in grow bags sized at around 20 -30 gallons or around 14 inch diameter.
So we conclude that a 5 gallon tomato growing bag having a minimum of 8 inch diameter is ideal for little tomato plant types. Fresh tomatoes taste best.
Avoid harvesting green colored tomatoes. When frost is around the corner or if you wish to harvest all tomatoes you can separate green ones from the red and them keep them in warmth until they turn ripe.
A good idea would be piling them up, the single layer in container and with warm place, around 22C or 77F temperature would be really great.
