Outdoors… should I go with 5 or 7gal pots? Should i go fabric or plastic pots?
Now lets talk organic soil.
What would you go with?
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I’m lucky to have some outdoor beds that I mulch heavily with Maple leaves every fall. Chuck some Tomato tone or Build A Soil craft blend in holes when I transplant plants. I’d like to see some SIP action if going containers. Maybe fabric bags with wick and basin?? In for more opinions on the matter. Far from an expert.
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Stick them in the ground @Gonzo just planted twelve last weekend and have a whole flat ready to go!
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Ground is clay & not sure which spot gets the best sun… so going pots this run 
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I’ll be running Punta Banda in 3 gallon smart pots this year. Medium- small tomatoes, early fruiting.
For larger toms, especially indeterminate, I’d say 5gal.
Happy Frog is a good base IME, or I’m running mine in Build a Soil ultra clean, cut with promix.
Fertilizing with homemade inputs after they use up the soil nutes.
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I do 10 gallon green colored fabric pots. Bigger the better mainly to maximize moisture retention. Extreme wet/dry cycles split the fruit, so go 7.
I use a lot of coast of Maine products, mix some organic Promix with a bag of lobster compost, some extra perlite and top dress with the stonington blend and their buds and blooms. I do have some of that Epsoma tomato tone, works well also.
I do cherry size varieties in bags but full size in beds, never had much luck yielding larger varieties in containers.
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I would go as big as you can, so the seven for me. Maybe give them a little shade each day. They drink a lot of water so you’ll need to keep up on that, but not too much to prevent splitting. Keeping the soil moderately moist, continually, is best. Not wet but not drying out. You can also put the fabric bags in a large flood tray, or on top of a bigger pot so the roots have more room to reach down.
Depending on what type you’re growing, the season will be over once it gets too hot. If you have a good spot to give some shade every day, you’ll stretch that out. Cherry tomatoes should continue to throw fruit continually.
I have some heirloom Purple Cherokee that I’m about to up pot and get ready for mid may. Enjoy! peace
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That clay soil mixed 1:1:1:1 with ProMix, compost or composted manure, and landscaping pumice would be my move, in seven gallon white or silver (painted or wrapped) plastic pots, on a big DIY flood tray with some washed gravel in between the pots to make it look nicer and blend it into the yard. All you need is 2x4s on edge for the frame with some pool or roof liner scrap or thick drop cloth plastic as a liner, that’s how we make skating rinks in the backyard in the winter. In smaller pots like 5G it’s that or drip emitters with the rate tomatoes drink at in late summer, I was soaking them twice a day before we got raised beds and they still didn’t fruit as well as they should have.
Absolutely use Tomato-Tone and don’t look back, I’ve never gotten tomatoes like I do with it. Sweet, high enough Brix to resist stem end rot and molds, and prolific right through the fall. Nothing but good local soil mix and Tomato-Tone with some kelp and crab meal added, with some compost teas and a few PureCrop1 foliars in the damp cool fall to keep the rot off.
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Hey, that’s what my weed gets!
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Try using this map with the sun angles on, super useful for that.
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Lot of great suggestions thank you @GMan @Dirt_Wizard @HeadyBearAdventures @AmazingLarry @BRMTreefarmer & @Cbizzle
I just might try digging up a spot in the yard, if i can avoid the sprinkler system 
And also do some bags/pots.
What else do yall grow beside tomatoes?
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Anything and everything…
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I run my tomatoes in 5G buckets and I have to water them everyday in the summer. 7 would probably be better.
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Cool and rainy here on Long Island so the lettuce bed is starting to take off. I put some carrots in a large patio planter as an experiment. I’ve got some beets down in the ground as well.
Next month when it really warms up… red peppers! My kids love red peppers and they can be pretty pricy so i grow a bunch of those. Cucumbers, there’s varieties that work great in 10 gallon grow bags, you just have to cage them.
Jalapeños work great in planters. I was so sick of jalapeños by the fall last year, had one in a little decorative planter no more than 4 gallons… thing was a beast. Cilantro, basil and Thai basil great in planters. I go into shops in the fall and buy all the discounted seeds, put them in the fridge and just go nuts in spring. Shotgun seeds all over, not stress about what doesn’t work.
I have to admit I’m not a PURE organic gardener, now and then I’d dump some runoff from a coco grow here and there in some of the planters. Mostly that gets tossed at the base of my rose and honey suckle.
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Yep, as big as a pot as you can. Was watering my 3 gallon fabric pots multiple times a day during the heatwave last year
Been feeding em with Gaia Green 4-4-4, a bit in the hole when transplanting and top sprinkle here and there
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We grow little of everything but alot potatoes and tomatoes.
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@Gonzo check out this post, the trifecta is Bio-Tone Starter, Plant-Tone, and Tomato-Tone.
You could swap out the BTS for Down To Earth Bio-Live or Bio-Fish if that’s around instead, I think the Tomato-Tone is worth finding for flowering. This year I mixed up potting mix from 4cf of ProMix moisture control, 1.5cf Espoma Organic Raised Bed Mix, 1cf composted cow manure (Wicked Good from Connecticut Organics), 2qt CoM EWC, 1qt Espoma Lightning Lime, and a five gallon bucket of the local topsoil and compost mix we filled the raised beds with last year.
That was the base and then I added 3c Tomato-Tone, 3c Plant-Tone, 3c Bio-Fish, 3c Dr Earth 4-6-3, 2c Bio-Tone Starter, 2c insect frass, 1c Roots seabird guano, and a cup of AgSil16H as nutes and micros and mycos etc. I filled a quart takeout with a cup each of rolled oats, basmati rice, flax seed meal, and chickpea flour and mixed that in too, to give the soil something to chew on as it wakes up and it can colonize new territory along with the sterile ProMix. That’s cooking under a tarp in the driveway for a week or so while I get pots ready and find the last materials for the mix.
I need to find 10-20 gallons of pumice around soon and wash a cubic foot of coarse perlite and that will be the aeration along with maybe some washed play sand and I gotta scrape up some leaf mold from the local forest. Maybe rice hulls if the local brew place has them for cheap and I can get some malted barley too, I only have powder and I want some coarse grind. That’ll do it, and should get me something like ten cubic feet of potting mix to play with this summer along with the raised beds and the nice black milled mulch I’ve been getting from the local trash place for $20/yard, hauling back half a yard at a time on my bike trailer in roller bins and Rubbermaid totes. It’s gonna be a great summer here, and I wish you the best of luck in your garden too!
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I would like to know if these can get thicker ?
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are they determinate or indeterminate?
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