What size pots should I plant my tomatoes in?

by Sally on May 20, 2009

What size should a tomato pot be

This week is the big tomato plant out week.

I’m going to use a mix of pots and grow bags.

With the pots, what I want to know is what size I need.

These are the answers I could find:

Most recommendations refer to the diameter of the pot.

The minimum recommended size seems to be 9” (23cm).
A lot of recommendations are for 10” (25cm) or 12” (31cm) in diameter.  A couple were for 12”-14” (31cm-36cm).

Some recommendations refer to volume rather than diameter.
(Some of these were in gallons.  If this is the case and you want to work in litres then according to the back of my Nutri Tomato feed bottle: 1 gallon = 4.5 litres.)
One recommendation was for a 2 gallon pot so 9 litres. Some were for 10 or 15 litre pots.  For tall cordons one recommendation was for a minimum of 15 litres.

All of which meant I was confused by the Sankey Tomato Pots that I found on line that were 9” in diameter but only 5 litres in volume. Perhaps they were for smaller plants earlier in the growing season?

I will keep my eye out for more info!

I will also be posting on which pots I used and posting on growbags as well.

If you grow your tomatoes in pots what size would you recommend ? And do you think it’s more helpful to think in width or volume ?

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