Tomatoes in growbag using grow pots

[vegelady]

I am a new vegetable grower and have bought a couple of growbags to grow bush tomatoes and courgettes. I have seen that you can buy grow pots which cut into the grow bag. Has anyone used these and do they work and improve watering, yield etc?
thanks
Alison

[kethry]

yes they do work. i wouldn't worry about buying special pots. just buy normal pots and cut the bottom off. just be careful not to push them too far down that the bottom of the plastic sits against the ground, and cuts off access for the roots into the compost of the growbag.

It also makes watering the tomatoes quite a lot easier.

keth
xx

[vegelady]

thank you, I'm trying to set up raised beds to start growing vegetables but setting up is so expensive, I keep reading the posts to get ideas on how to do things cheaply

[RobintheBobin]

Apparently toms have two sets of roots - top ones for feeding and bottom ones for watering. Best and cheap way to get to the roots is to cut the bottom off a plastic drinks bottle and push it down to near the base of the plants and water them through this (about a litre a day per plant) - you can leave the lid on and pierce holes in it for a drip feed. Kethry's suggestion about the large pots is what I do too and I feed them directly into that section every week.

[gojiberry]

If you are using your own pots with the bottom cut off instead of expensive grow pots then cut the bottom to look like the top of the wall on a fort, that way it wont matter how far down you push the pot as the roots will be able to get through the gaps if you know what I mean. I've had my home made grow pots for about 10 years now and they will be used again this year. Cant remember where I got mine from after all that time, but the flower buckets from morrisons would be ideal and they are easy to cut. Only 99p for about 8/10 depending on which store.

Ian

[maytreefrannie]

Sorry I don't understand this thread - do you stand the pots (with bottom cut off) in the growbag compost and grow the tomatoes in them, or do you push them in at the side of the tomatoes for watering?

[selfraising]

I actually splashed out a few years back and bought the grow pots which have got a reservoir for water around the outside of them but i appreciate the idea of the bottom cut off pots.
Maytreefrannie, yes the idea is to stand the cut off pots in the growbags because it gives more room for the tomato roots to grow down than a growbag on its own would do. I think people are suggesting that a cut off drinks bottle gets pushed into the side of this pot to help with watering. I use this method a lot for thirsty veg.

[sez]

Sorry I don't understand this thread - do you stand the pots (with bottom cut off) in the growbag compost and grow the tomatoes in them, or do you push them in at the side of the tomatoes for watering?

either! growing the toms in the pots in the growbags gives them more room for growth (and makes watering easier) ... or putting cut off bottles next to the toms (or any other plant) makes watering easier.

gojiberry ... or 99p for TWENTY FIVE as I got the other day someone can't count!

[rodofgod76]

I've been considering buying growpots this year, but for 15 of them it does seem a touch expensive.

Might go down the route of cutting the bottom off a pot. Will a 10" pot do the trick? And how many drinks bottles do people usually stick in a growbag? I'm guessing 2.

[Alison]

I just use those cheapo black tomato pots with the bottoms cut off. Been using them now for about 5 years and they'll last for ages still.

[RobintheBobin]

Sorry I don't understand this thread - do you stand the pots (with bottom cut off) in the growbag compost and grow the tomatoes in them, or do you push them in at the side of the tomatoes for watering?

Choose how many tomatoes you want to grow per gro-bag (I tried three last year but may only do two this year)
Cut the bottom of two or three large pots
Make two or three little crosses in the compost and open the slits so you can fit the pots into the gro-bag - push them into the bag but not to the bottom.
Fill each pot with compost
Plant a tomato plant into each pot with the compost as close to the bottom-most leaves as possible.

Cut the bottom of a plastic bottle - I recommend the tonic bottles (complete excuse to drink more G&Ts ) from all supermarkets as they have nice narrow necks.
Remove the caps.
Make more little crosses in the gro-bag and shove the bottle neck down next to each plant.
Fill with water - a litre per plant per day as they are thirsty beggers.

Finally if you want the water to drip in you could always leave the cap on, pierce it and then sink the bottle in.

Feeding should be done into the large pots in which the tomatoes are planted and not into the sunk bottles.

Hope that helps x

Phew...almost sounds like I know what I'm talking about!!!

[Twinkle]

a tip that someone once gave me for tomatoes in grow bags was to get the bag and fold it in half, then cut through the whole lot making 2 half bags.
Stand each on its end and roll the top down to make 2 "bag-pots"
More water-retaining and deeper for the plants to root making them a bit more stable to stop them falling over.
Did this a few years running, but never did a direct comparison between that way and the traditional flat-bag method

[sez]

a tip that someone once gave me for tomatoes in grow bags was to get the bag and fold it in half, then cut through the whole lot making 2 half bags.
Stand each on its end and roll the top down to make 2 "bag-pots"
More water-retaining and deeper for the plants to root making them a bit more stable to stop them falling over.
Did this a few years running, but never did a direct comparison between that way and the traditional flat-bag method

I think I'd do the same. A growbag is very shallow, I don't see how the plants don't fall over (even the bush type ones). I prefer to grow them in pots because of this (plus I find growbags to be slug-heaven!)

[ukmastiff]

I'm a novice so hesitate to post any ideas but , I too think grow bags are rather shallow so I am using 75 litre compost bags instead. They are twice as deep , wider and I only paid 3 pounds per bag.

cheers Mas

[maytreefrannie]

Thanks a million to Robin the Bobin, Sez and all who posted to this thread.

Robin, after reading down to here, I now THINK I know what I'm talking about!

Definitely something to think about here, thanks again.