Hi Let me say a couple things here please: I grow tomatoes in containers outside every year and each one produces way more fruit than my neighbors outdoor in ground tomatoes do. Here are dome tips: 1. must get min of 6 hrs full sun 2. You need to start with a premium peat based soil mix and add some extra perlite. Look on line for making soil mix for growing weed (MJ) indoors. If u don't care about organic growing, use miracle grow potting soil with already added fert...not garden soil, not top soil, not dirt from ur yard and no cheap potting mixes. /Soils with already added fert work great for tomatoes but apparently not for weed so u will notice those sites don't recommend it. For tomatoes it will work outstandingly 3. I use 7 gallon plastic trash cans. 1 plant per can. I have used 5 gallon buckets but they are NOT big enough. This probably relates to number 4... 4. I never grow determinate tomatoes or tiny grape sized tomatoes or bush tomatoes or tomatoes bred for container growing. - WHY? - because I want the biggest and most tomatoes. I grow large 1 lb and up varieties of indeterminate tomatoes. I get tons of large fruit. Any plant will produce slightly smaller fruit in containers so start out with BIG varieties! 5. ALSO - I don't get why people recommend determinate tomatoes for containers - they only produce for one shot and then they are done. 6. Obviously you need to pay attention to proper watering, feeding etc. If you use grow soils with fert already in you will not need to fert for the first 5-6 weeks. Then only if needed and only in 1/4 to 1/2 strength. 7. If you go organic, and know how to make a good mix, you will not need to fert at all. Again, If u don't know how to make an indoor soil mix look at a weed (MJ) growing site. DONT FORGET - weed growers are the top professionals at growing indoors. Don't be afraid to look at these sites for expert information on indoor growing.

Hi, Tom After I scanned your article, the first thing I did was follow the link to the OSU research you cited. As I read through it, I didn't see anything different than what is contained in an article I wrote back in '94. The wording and discussion is actually so close to what I wrote, that I tried to find out whether that article was written after mine. I think that initially, adding a small fraction of perlite pumice, Turface, things that you usually consider as drainage material to a large fraction of peat, increases drainage, but only until the peat compacts/nests around the 'drainage' material. Perlite is normally included in commercially packaged soils at less than 10% of the whole. Doubling its presence isn't going to increase drainage or reduce the ht of the PWT, though it will reduce the total volume of water the medium is capable of holding. Illustration: start with 10 parts of fine sand that supports a 4" PWT. Add 1 part of BBs. Does the flow through rate change? How about the ht of the PWT or volume of air in the medium? Technically, on a per volume basis, there is a decrease in the % of air in the sand/BB mix compared to only the sand w/o BBs. All that changes is the 'volume' of water in the PWT. Peat may be slightly different because it's interlocking fibers may not compact to the degree that sand will, but remember that the fiberosity exhibits the same properties whether or not there is drainage material present. If peat compacts when there is no drainage material, it will still compact when there is. In order for drainage material to improve flow-through rates, it has to affect gravitational flow potential. In order to do that, it must great pockets where water molecules can adhere to themselves, increasing their collective mass. These large droplets then depend on cohesion to keep them together as gravity acts to move them down and out of the container. If drainage material can't create 'puddles and channels' within the media, it's not going to be effective. I want to comment on some of the things you mentioned as though we're conversing, so I'll make your offerings bold and my reply will be in default type: Drainage though is a bit of a false goal, or a goal based on an assumption. What we really want is to partially dry out the core of the mix at intervals between watering, which prevents that sour core-rot where roots won't live. My focus has always been on aeration, though I recognize the direct/converse relationship between drainage and aeration. The soils I build and suggest are based on the assurance that they will retain ample volumes of air for extended periods - that they are structurally sound. Of course, drainage automatically comes along for the ride. I don't think I would say "What we really want is to partially dry out the core of the mix at intervals between watering". My view is that there is no 'core' to speak of, because water that is not tightly bound to or in media particles moves down to occupy the PWT, which is actually the bane of most commercially prepared container media. Moisture locked in and on soil particles situated above water in the PWT moves quite freely through media by diffusion, so there is never a saturated 'core', only the PWT if the medium supports one. What we really want, is for the PWT to disappear as fast as possible, so a favorable volume of air can return to the soil ASAP. Roots in soggy media begin to die very quickly, often within a few hours or less at temperatures above 60-65*, so PWTs are a decidedly bad thing. Remember please, that here we are looking at media from the plant's perspective. I acknowledge that a PWT can be a necessity to accommodate our ability or our prioritization in terms of how often we can water, but that doesn't change the fact that media that do not support a PWT and need more frequent watering offer greater opportunity, within the limits of other cultural factors, for plants to grow to their genetic potential. That's an important consideration, because if we knowingly use a soil that supports a PWT because it's more convenient, we are sacrificing some degree of growth and vitality on the altar of that convenience. I try to build my soils to maximize water retention and still have no (or very little) perched water. The cyclic death and regeneration of fine rootage exposed to the anaerobic conditions of media that support PWTs is very expensive from the perspective of energy outlay. Energy that might have gone into blooms, fruit, foliage, or just increasing biomass, must be directed to root regeneration subsequent to each time we dare allow our planting to be irrigated to container capacity. Surely drainage helps and is good generally, but you are assuming it is the only way. I think you can see from my offerings that how I approach container media is more complex than only a single narrow perspective would allow. Al I've seen in your other posts where you refer to capillary action of soils as a negative. I couldn't disagree more. Capillary action is the savior of a soil mix; it's the vehicle that brings wet core water & water from the perched water table you described up to the drying surface, and balances moisture throughout the pot. It eliminates the perched water table. Peat has it and bark doesn't. I've never referred to capillary action as a negative. It just is what it is - the product of adhesion + cohesion - no more friend or foe than gravity or diffusion, which is something you didn't consider. Plants absorb water a molecule at a time, and water readily diffuses in media of large particles due to superior gas exchange. Here again, it's kind of a personal choice. You may prefer a soil with good wicking capabilities, but along with that comes the fact that the better they wick the more perched water they support. I, on the other hand, prefer a soil with good gas exchange (diffusion) and no PWT. The price I'm willing to pay is a strengthened watering can arm. ;o) Bark and peat feel dry to the touch when they reach about 40% moisture content, but plants can still extract water from media particles down to about 30-25%, so 'feels dry' isn't necessarily dry. There's a cush there. I understand what's required for wicking SWCs and how water retention in wick-irrigated media varies from media watered from the top, so we can save that talk for another time. Water starts to perch in containers when the soil particles are something just a little larger than .1". As particle size decreases, the ht of the PWT increases inversely. Whether or not bark holds perched water depends on it's size. Obviously, bark the size of Sugar Pops will hold no perched water, but bark ground to the consistency of peat will. Peat may initially hold more air and water than composted bark, but we all know that compaction is a considerable issue for peat; and conifer bark breaks down at roughly 1/4-1/5 the rate of peat, all cultural influences equal. I point to the fact that I always suggest partially composted or uncomposted bark in the soils I use, in sizes up to 3/8" to ensure no or minimal perched water. The grower can then add finer particulates as he/she sees fit to adjust the water retention of the media. When you start with fine particulates, it's very difficult to amend them to increase drainage/aeration, though as noted above, you CAN add materials like perlite that decrease the volume of water the soil can hold. It just makes more sense to me to approach this from the perspective of building a soil that holds no perched water, but is capable of holding an adequate volume of water in micro-pores, leaving macro-pores largely open, than it is to adopt a soil that, at container capacity, always has a significant fraction of available macroporosity clogged with water. Again, it has much to do with trade offs and what we are willing to do insofar as watering frequency (convenience), but the more highly aerated soil with better gas exchange, which occurs partially because we need to irrigate more frequently, offers better potential. I've grown extensively in both, and if the results weren't significantly better, I'd probably still be growing in a peat or compost-based soil. As always, YMMV. Good talking to you Tom. Al

muskymojo, I've used 5 parts compost 1 part peat 1 part vermiculite or perlite 1 part sand This recipe came from a great old book I got from the library once called MOVEABLE FEASTS with lots of info on growing edibles in containers. They suggest filling the container 1/3 of the way, then mixing in a half-cup (for a 5 gallon container) of 5-10-10 fertilizer, then filling the rest of the way. This way the plant gets a shot of fertilizer when it gets bigger and its roots get down there---when it needs it most. I see no reason you couldn't use your manure for the compost, as long as it's well rotted. You might want to break up clumps to get a good texture. The sand should be "sharp"---it should be kind of "crunchy" when you push on it, not smooth. Cheap builder's sand is usually fine; I mention this though because sometimes all I can find easily at a garden centre is sand labelled "play sand," which may or may not be appropriate--some play sand is really smooth (I note a previous poster said "river sand"---maybe the really soft stuff is beach sand?). A 5-gallon bucket is a little small for a full-sized tomato plant but it's definitely do-able; you will just get not quite as big plants. The main challenge with container tomatoes is keeping them watered enough. They'll need it DAILY on hot summer days. Good luck! Zabby

@daninthedirt - addressed to you because you introduced the thought, but written for all to consider. Most growers tend to look at growing things in containers from their own perspective instead of from the plant's, even when it's easier to come together in agreement when both people are viewing things from the same perspective. There is no judgment to be made about that, but it's worth realizing they are indeed very different views and often mutually exclusive. E.g., the grower likes 3 week watering intervals; the plant hates them (speaking in general terms). The grower prefers a pretty high-fired ceramic pot with a drip glaze finish and a bow; the plant wants a plain, unglazed, low-fired clay pot or a mesh basket. The grower wants Osmocote to do all his/her fertilizing by way of controlled release fertilizer (CRF) prills, but the plant says, "Whoa - when the dog days are here, I want less fertility in the pot while I'm sort of dormant, not the maximum amount released by CRFs during the hottest days, so I want an informed grower to take control of my nutritional needs". The grower doesn't want to bother with full repots of perennial plants, full repots including bare-rooting/ root-pruning/ complete change of soil; but the plant demands it under condition of realizing as much of its genetic potential as possible. The grower doesn't want to bother providing a method of shading pots on sunny dog days to ensure root function remains unaffected by high temps; the plant demands it with threat of collapse of the entire organism. Inattention to detail is easily turned to limitations or loss of potential if the plant isn't getting what it wants. If you act in a manner that requires the plant to be forgiving of what cultural conditions you provide, you can never expect the plant to give its best. When it comes to plants, lost potential can never be reclaimed. "People are somewhat frantic about getting a perfect potting mix. In truth, you just need something that can hold some moisture, and allows the roots to spread." I'm not sure I'd call it frantic, maybe 'eager'? And that plants are forgiving depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to raise the healthiest plants possible, attention to what might seem to be small details is essential, and plants can't then forgive what would be a minor error; this because, when it comes to plants, lost potential can never be reclaimed. While most experienced growers can make a middling grow medium work to realize middling results, inexperienced growers more often than not have frustrating problems with middling mediums, mostly because of excess water retention. I, and several others here, have been witness to many hundreds if not thousands of significant transformations of growers' ability to maintain the vitality of their plants by rethinking what they were growing in, where prior they struggled mightily and said so, and I went through the same struggle more years ago than I care to count. Poor grow media is probably responsible for more trips to these gardening forums in search of resolution than any other single issue, other than perhaps inadequate light. Finally, most people grow plants (other than for food) in pots to satisfy their nurturing bone. The better the care you're able to provide, the greater the sense of personal reward. We don't all interact with plants on the same plane, and the personal satisfaction that comes with being a better nurturer provides strong incentive to become even better, which in turn provides greater opportunity to change to a higher plane, which provides more personal satisfaction ....... ad infinitum. That might sound like some new age fantasy but it's grounded in the idea that if you're going to do something, do it to the best of your ability. Many of us believe there is more personal satisfaction in doing 1 thing well than 10 things with mediocrity. Al