If you want to grow tomatoes and are limited on space or are looking for something easy to maintain, using a GreenStalk Vertical Planter is a great option! There are a few tricks to growing such a large, vining plant so that’s what we are going to talk about today.
The easy route is to grow a container variety tomato like the Red Robin variety from Territorial Seed. It was definitely our favorite – we grew it from starter plants and seed and both did really well! The plants stayed really compact and pretty all season long while producing tasty tomatoes.
We have grown both determinate and indeterminate varieties at our office so it is possible to do both. If you want something that looks more “groomed” and maintained then you’ll definitely want to stick with the determinate variety that only gets to be a set height. The indeterminate can take over a GreenStalk if you let them!
The key to keeping your tomato plants healthy in a GreenStalk Vertical Planter is staking and watering well. Thankfully, the GreenStalk is easy to water and provides some help with staking. If you are growing multiple crops in the same planter, it’s important to check the largest fruit-producing plant pocket to see if it needs to be watered. For example, if you are growing one tier of onions, one tier of tomatoes, and two tiers of lettuce, the tomato and lettuce tiers will generally dry out faster than the onion tiers.
We always suggest planting larger plants in the bottom tiers, as it will be easier to stake as they grow upwards. An easy way to add stability to your plants is to insert wire hangers in the tier above the plant and allow the vining plant to grow through the hanger providing support for larger stalks. We have also successfully grown large indeterminate tomato plants by wrapping the system in twine to keep the plant from falling over.
We also have the GreenStalk Plant Supports that are incredibly sturdy and made specifically for GreenStalk Planters.
We have also grown our tomatoes with onions which allowed the tomato plants to take over without harming the other crop. Growing root vegetables is a great idea if you want big healthy tomato plants since it gives the tomatoes maximum root space while still utilizing all planting pockets.
We have started tomatoes under grow lights and transplanted them outside into the GreenStalks, directly sown tomato seeds, as well as planted starter plants — all of these methods have worked for us! As long as you have a good potting mix in your containers and fertilize well, there’s no reason why you can’t get a great harvest growing in the GreenStalk.
Another thing to keep in mind is that indeterminate tomato varieties usually produce more tomatoes than a determinate variety. If you prefer smaller more manageable plants, a determinate tomato plant would be better for you. If you do choose a larger plant, pruning can help keep their growth in check. An easy way to do that with tomatoes is to prune the suckers. The sucker is the stem growing between the two "L" shape existing stems. Pruning the suckers once a week in the summer should help keep your tomato plants more manageable.
Happy Gardening!
