[chillimummy]

Hi
After reading about growing tomatoes in a bottomless pot on a grow bag, wondered how people have found this? Usually just grow them in large pots quite successfully but had read about using florists buckets and removing the bottom. 99p in Morrisons for 8 buckets so cheap to try this! Hoping for better crop than usual. Nothing ventured, nothing gained! 

[cadalot]

I'm growing them in the buckets with the bottoms 

[Ma Lowe]

I'm growing them in the buckets with the bottoms 

Me too all from Morrisons. I always grown in grow bags in the past but hope that the pots will be better.

[Potty Plotty Lotty]

I tried it a few years ago using this sort of thing to aid watering from below to encourage the roots to grow deeply:

http://www.harrodhorticultural.com/speed-feed-for-growbags-pid8371.html

but they got blight so couldn't really assess whether there was a benefit. I found it a bit of a faff to be honest so didn't repeat it.

I then progressed to cutting grow bags in half and using them as pots and now have moved onto 15L pots similar to florist buckets which I prefer due to simplicity (I'm a lazy gardener!) and because I can stake more easily by tying the stakes from 3 pots together in a pyramid for excellent stability-something I always struggled with using grow bags.

Will be interesting to hear of your results.

[Sleepingpopman]

Hi  For the last 4 years I've grown them in large buckets with holes in the bottom which I stand in big garden trugs, I keep about 6" of water in the trugs so they take water when they want it & then feed at the top about once a week. I started this because we were going on holiday for 2 weeks & had nobody to come in & water them, so I filled the trugs up with water & it worked  . Hope this helps. 

[snowdrops]

Hi I grow mine in the same bottomless flower  buckets mainly. I used to stand them on trays of gravel but found they got botrytis as there was too much water around. So last year I filled some grow bags that I bought,think grow your own veg bags & planted them in to extra compost in those. So bucket on compost in bag, no botrytis, & a good crop. I feed in to the bucket & water into the bag

[upthetump]

i normally grow in big pots but this year i am also trialling 2 pots with bottom cut out in a grow bag  and others in conventional pots. will be interesting to compare results. what i shjould have done though is cut a disc out of the bottom instead off cutting the whole bottom off, they would be more rigid that way. 

[Lardman]

what i shjould have done though is cut a disc out of the bottom instead off cutting the whole bottom off, they would be more rigid that way. 

I found the flower buckets I bought had a ridge and lip about ½ an inch from the edge, it was very easy to take a sharp knife and cut to the lip.

[upthetump]

what i shjould have done though is cut a disc out of the bottom instead off cutting the whole bottom off, they would be more rigid that way. 

I found the flower buckets I bought had a ridge and lip about ½ an inch from the edge, it was very easy to take a sharp knife and cut to the lip.

I think the ones i have also have the lip, i didn't think it through before i started hacking the botom off. another on the list of lessons learned

[Headgardener22]

I thought that the purpose of growing tomatoes in buckets on growbags was to get deeper compost. Tomatoes grow roots up the stem if they are buried so they get more goodness into them.

I have heard that tomatoes have two sets of roots, the lower ones for moisture and the higher ones for goodness. So if you grow them in a growbag with a bucket on top, the lower roots search out all the moisture in the growbag and the upper roots take the nutrient from the compost in the bucket.

[chillimummy]

Thanks all for replies. Tomatoes all planted and all lined up outside in their pots and grow bags (I don't have a greenhouse). Have used organic slug pellets too so hoping they don't all get eaten! Kept them in my conservatory last year in pots.
Hoping for a good crop