Greenhouse Tomato Buckets

Earlier this gardening year my dh and his dad built a small greenhouse for us. I've been thoroughly enjoying trying out various projects in it. One idea was to start tomatoes in it to #1 have tomatoes earlier in the year and #2 to have tomatoes after frost.

I was casting about trying to think of what to plant the tomatoes in. Big buckets that I'd have to buy? Hmmmm..... Then I spotted the stack of empty cat litter buckets. Eureka! They were starting to pile up.



First step was to thoroughly was them, best not to skip this step as I missed a couple and the results weren't pretty as they may have contained residue from cleaning solutions which harmed the tomatoes planted in them.





Next, drill holes in the bottom for drainage. Very important and very easy to do with a 3/8th bit in dh's cordless drill.





Flipping it over it was time to add gravel, an inch or so.




Then came potting soil, I used one formulated for container planting and pre-moistened it.

Then a big hole was dug in the middle to plant the tomatoes as deeply as possible. More soil was added to bring it up to an inch from the lip of the bucket. This was all firmed down.



All the tomatoes were lined up along the front windows of the greenhouse. We have 2 sub-arctic maxi, 2 lemon-boy, 2 long keeper, 2 Russian, and our ds's cherry tomato in a wooden planter in the corner.



This picture of the greenhouse was taken part way through he planting of the tomatoes. Now that they are done they cover the whole front of it with one pot on the far left wall too. Over on the far right are two buckets of long English slicing cucumbers, we'll see how they grow up the wall. I just really don't have the room for trailing on the ground vegetables here at the house garden. Oh, and ignore the date stamp on the photos, long story, new camera, certainly not the correct dates!