The last year we gardened in Texas, I guess it was 2020, before we planted, we came across videos by “Leon” about how to grow tomatoes in self wicking buckets. We were given a bunch of tubs that were larger than 5 gallon buckets and we put 4 tomatoes in each bucket. Even in the Texas heat, we were able to go about 5 or 6 days without having to water and we had a great tomato crop.
The 5 gallon tubs had some tomatoes but mostly peppers, eggplants, herbs, etc. There are several good things about planting tomatoes this way. Here, we don’t have access to the feed tubs so we’ll have to use 5 gallon buckets.
- They work great for those of us who don’t have large garden spaces. For the space it would take to have 10 buckets, you could have 10 producing vegetable plants.
- We can get an early start with our planting and then bring the buckets into the garage if there’s a cold snap coming.
- The fertilizer is added with the water through the pipe sticking up.
- Weeding is much easier! If it’s in an area where you can put gravel or mulch, you can cut down on weeds. If it’s in an area where you may not want to kill all the grass, just leave enough space between the buckets to get through with a weed trimmer.
That’s how we will grow them again this year. I believe Leon has perfected his method a little through the years and done some additional videos so be sure and watch the latest ones if you’re interested in using this method. He has one that’s called the “Trucker’s Method” or something like that and it’s designed so it can go longer than a week without watering. For those who travel and aren’t able to water more often, this one is great idea.
Joanne says
Thanks for the explanation and the link. I am definitely going to grow some tomatoes in buckets this year!
patti says
we:have been doing a similar process successfully for years. we use rubbermaid totes and put 4 tomatoes plants per container. i’ll check out that trucker method as there are often times we feel chained to the garden when a travel option comes up.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I think any method so long as it’s self wicking would work about the same.
Paula Nordt says
We save our large Tidy Cat plastic buckets. I wonder if these would be sufficient for one plant each.
Cindy F says
This is very interesting! There are many times we have to run out and cover plants because of the cold so the idea we could just bring them into the garage sounds good. I’ll have to look into this!
Sheryl says
…We’ve done rain gutter gardening before and it was great. I’m going to try this. I have several large feed tubs I bought from a friend. I need to see if I can get more.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I may try my peas in a rain gutter. Not sure if Vince is going to go along with another of my crazy ideas or not.