Stumbled on a fact about tomato spacing that changed my balcony setup

I saw a YouTube video from a guy in Portland who tested different container sizes on his apartment balcony, and he found that small tomato plants spaced only 8 inches apart still produced fine. I had been giving each plant its own 12-inch pot with tons of space, using up half my balcony. After I tried crowding two cherry tomato plants into one box last spring, I got just as many fruits and freed up room for basil. It really surprised me because everything says to give them room. Has anyone else experimented with tighter spacing and seen similar results?

2 comments

2 Comments

valwest1mo ago

Honestly, I'm a bit skeptical about this. I've been growing tomatoes for like 6 years now, mostly in buckets on my porch, and the one time I tried cramming two plants into a 14-inch pot was a total disaster. They got all leggy and lanky, barely made any fruit, and then they both got blight halfway through the summer. I get that it might work for cherry tomatoes or if you're in a perfect climate like Portland, but I think most people probably need to give them a little more room than that.

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wyatt_green1mo agoMost Upvoted

So you're telling me two tomato plants in one pot didn't work out? Shocking. Next you'll say my three pepper plants in a shoe box won't produce a bumper crop either. I guess all those Pinterest articles about "maximizing small space yields" were lying to me. What's your go to pot size for a single tomato plant, since clearly I've been doing this wrong?