How to Grow Cherry Tomatoes In a Pot Like a Pro

Last Updated on May 6, 2021 by cmoarz

It doesn’t matter weather you live in a small urban town, A massive bustling city, or a wide open space in the country side, Everyone can grow cherry tomatoes as long as they have the most important ingredient, sunshine!.. and water.. it’s easy and you will soon learn how to grow cherry tomatoes in a pot just like the pros do (that’s clickbait, are there tomato growing pros? is that a thing?)

But seriously, these little red delicious delicacies (say that 3 times fast!) are amazing, resilient and easy as all heck to grow just about anywhere. The most important thing to remember about growing cherry tomatoes is they have been genetically bred to be exactly that, A container plant.

Unlike it’s cousins, The cherry tomato is much smaller in stature, give very large amounts of fruit for their size, and a couple plants can really go a long way to having nice fresh tomatoes in your salad every single day.

As with any plant, before you learn how to grow it you have to choose the variety you want.

Step 1: Choosing the Cherry Tomato species you want to grow

Most Cherry Tomatoes species are the types of plants that produce fruit all year round. This makes them especially perfect for container, bag or pot gardening. All you have to do is continue to harvest your tomatoes when ever they are ripe and it will continue to give you new tomatoes.

It also goes with out saying, they don’t like the cold. So be sure to tuck them in every night with a nice cup of hot cocoa. Because plants like that sort of thing.. Or I do anyway. Who knows what plants like. Manga probably.

I’ll make choosing easy for you, here are the most popular varieties people tend to choose. These are all of the “bush” variety, which makes them ideal for containers. (Actually one might be considered a vine?)

Step 2: Plant Em

Just like most plants you should start a little nursery for the seedlings to start sprouting nice and strong before transplanting them. You should start them in early spring, However if your doing it indoors and have 1) aqueduct natural light and heat, or, 2) artificial light and heat than it truly does not matter.

When it comes time to start transplanting them to bigger containers, You should use 15 to 20 inc for each plant. These guy’s like their space. Depending on the variety you can go bigger or smaller.

For soil, keep in mind these plants will produce year round given the right environment and care. Make sure the nutrients are up to par with what they need. Roughly 5-6 gallons of soil should be adequate. You may need to add additional nutrients later down the road after a full year or two. In general use your own experience and knowledge, if in doubt google it.

It’s best to hang these up in a high place. Cherry Tomatoes are quiet attractive as home decor and it helps keep the dirty pests away.

Also it should be kept in mind, some of these varieties are bushy and veiny, So don’t pack them in too close to each other.

Step 3: Growth!

It’s growing, You did everything right! Pat your self on the back for not accidentally killing yet another house plant. See, grow cherry tomatoes in a pot wasn’t so hard after all was it.

Unless.. You did everything right! But you killed it somehow anyway. In that case.. Well, shit. Try again I suppose?

Well, shit

Building blocks of life, Nitrogen, Potassium and the other ones…Phosphorus? Anyway those 3 things are important for a tomatoes life. Nitrogen makes it grow big, strong and delicious. Phosphorus and banana poop Potassium on the other hand increase the yield of your tomatoes. Which means you get more, Way more if you balance everything right.

Their are multiple ways of going about balancing these 3 things out. First of all do your research. This article doesn’t go that in depth because each species is unique and that’s way too much work to be completely honest. Make sure the proportions of what you put in are good for your species.

Start with a high quality rich compost blend, Particularly brands that focus on tomatoes probably. Why make your life harder?

Suddenly an amazon advert appears
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But if you do indeed hate yourself, here you go. About equal parts potting soil, perlite, sphagnum peat moss and compost. That’s a pretty average tomato growing medium. It will help you grow cherry tomatoes in a pot like article says, yes?

Coffee ground’s are supposed to be good for tomatoes, As well as eggshells. I never use them however. So that’s a personal preference on you.

Step 4: Time to harvest!

Take a second, have a nice deep breath, And savior the moment. Your tomatoes are plump, soft but firm, and as red as a…well a tomato..

Now it’s time for the hardest part, Taking your first fruit. All that blood sweat and tears, and heaps of tomato plant corpses, and you’ve finally got a perfect specimen. It’s such a shame to pluck at its beautiful succulent flesh.

But than you remember you’re hungry.

So off they come. An average cherry tomato will produce around 8-12lbs of tomatoes annually, depending on the species.

They are best served right off the plant, and a quick wash for hygienic reasons. Yes yes, You say you clean but do you really?

There are several ways to consume tomatoes. Generally most of them involved mouth stuff…. like salads. Why what were YOU thinking?

Eating them right off the vine in all their glory like an apple is a personal favorite. ^{Orally of course.}

Anyway chances are you won’t want to eat 10-20lbs of tomatoes anytime soon, or every single day. So you can also preserve them either by dehydrating them in the oven or dehydrator, Sun drying etc.

They can be frozen or pickled, and even canned if you have a pressure canner (please don’t try and water bath tomatoes, it wont work.)

Enjoy.

F.A.Q

Is coffee grounds good for tomato plants?

Yes! Coffee grounds are a very powerful thing to add to your tomato plants, one of the things that makes it work so well is coffee grounds are packed with nitrogen. This is a super important nutrition for your plant’s roots and helps the tomato produce as much chlorophyll as it needs.

Coffee grounds also tend to help with drainage due to their coarse nature, much like a fine gravel. Which in turn also helps aeration and at the same time, water retention where it’s needed.

You can also mix your coffee grounds with wood ash, cut up/shredded dead leaves and toss in a bit of time. This is a super rich type of compost that is ideal for tomatoes. Look around online to find the exact measurements of each.

Another benefit that makes coffee grounds good for tomato plants is the caffeine. What? Plants need caffeine? Well no, I do, But I don’t think they do :). No, what it does is act as an insect repellent, specifically the dreaded garden slug and his buddy the snail.

They crawl over top of it, absorb it all into their skin and croak. So they either avoid it or die trying to get to your plant. You can make a nice barrier of coffee grounds around your plants to really speed this effect up.

Are banana peels good for tomato plants?

Banana’s are great for your tomatoes plants. Just like for us, They add lots of potassium for your plant to use. They mix well with your compost as well given how fast they decompose.

That’s not all tho, the skin of the banana also has lots of other nutrients your cherry tomato plant will love, like phosphorus, calcium and iron.

If you want to go one step further, The smell of banana has also been shown to repell certain insects that seek to harm your plant, Such as aphids. Go ahead and make a banana water mixture in a spray bottle and give your plant a good misting it in. This should offer a nice, organic pest control for certain insects. So when it comes to How to Grow Cherry Tomatoes In a Pot this is definitely a grade A primo method addition.

How many tomato plants can you put in a 5 gallon bucket?

This really doesn’t require a long answer. The answers is 1. Tomato plans need as much space as they can get for their root systems as well as the amount of space their canopy takes up.

Do cherry tomatoes need to be pruned?

This depends weather the species of tomato you are growing is a determinate or an indeterminate. Since determinate species already have a predetermined height, size, width etc in general, they should not be pruned.

Indeterminate species will continue to grow until nature nukes them with frost. So if you intend to grow these indoors you will need to keep them pruned back a bit.

Check out this video by garden answers for different pruning techniques.