[steved]

I had great results with Sweet Million last year-simply couldnt eat them all!
I planted them in bottomless pots on top of grow bags.
This year im thimking of doing 'em in the bottomless pots on trays of gravel as ive been told its far easier to water into the gravel.

Trouble is it seems a bit strange just giving em a flower buckets worth of compost to do their thing in?
Has anyone done both methods and which would you say is the best?
Cheers

[Kleftiwallah]

At the end of the growing season and I pull the tom' plants from the beds in my greenhouse, I'm always amazed just how small a root ball they have, hardly ever bigger than a green plant/floral pot. 

They do have a deep tap root to get to the water and gravel will lose water through evaporation a lot quicker than soil/compost/peat.

I always sink a 'pop' bottle (inverted, hole cut in the base and small holes drilled into the cap) in the ground beside my toms.  tom' feed onto the surface and water into the bottle for the roots.      Hope this helps,   Cheers,     Tony.

[8doubles]

I use either compost or sharp sand to stand the buckets of compost in, gravel or pea shingle will be too free draining and not retain enough water for the toms. The roots do go a fair distance outside the bottomless buckets .
I also stand buckets of compost with small holes in the sides near the base in metal troughs which get an 1" of water in the bottom.

Sort of semi-hydroponics.  

[emptydraw]

I used to grow mine 3 to a grow bag, then 2 to a grow bag. Then I put 3 in an extra thick (basically double sized) grow bag. Then I used tomato rings in the thick growbags, which raise the soil level and give a reservoir for watering and feeding. Finally and for the last few years, I empty a growbag into a tall pot, about 15inches across and 2ft tall and then plant the tomato as deep as possible (tomatoes throw out extra roots from the stems) to maximise the rootsystem, add a cane, water and feed as normal. I havent looked back since, the pot is usually full of roots and the plants get extrememly tall and prolific.

Did I mention these are outdoors on our patio? No greenhouse here....

[mrs mud]

I would stick to the bottemless pots on growbags system but leave a good few inches at the top of the pot so you can fill up with water without it overflowing.  I used this approach the last few years on my concrete floored GH,  I have moved house and now have raised soil beds in the GH so it will be interesting to see what happens this year

[steved]

Thanks for the advice, might do a few of each and see which fares best
Cheers