Got banned from a gardening forum for saying you can grow tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets

My neighbor Bob told me to ignore the experts and just drill holes in a Home Depot bucket for my Roma tomatoes in Phoenix last summer. I posted the results showing 30 pounds of fruit and they flagged me for dangerous advice about drainage or something lol. Has anyone else gotten silenced for sharing something that actually worked perfectly?

3 comments

3 Comments

felix4144d ago

Those 5 gallon bucket setups work fine as long as you drill enough holes in the bottom and sides for drainage. The real issue is people using buckets without any holes and turning them into little swamps. Your tomatoes probably did great because Arizona heat dries things out fast anyway. The mods on those forums get weirdly protective about "proper" methods sometimes. They forget half the fun of gardening is just trying stuff and seeing what happens.

angelarivera4d ago

Yeah @felix414 got banned for arguing with a mod about soil pH too, right?

shane_park924d ago

The drainage thing is mostly a myth if you're doing it right. I've been running five gallon buckets in Seattle for three years now and the problem isn't holes, it's people not checking after heavy rain. My Cherokee Purples outgrew my raised bed plants last season and the mods there still won't let me post the root pics. They banned a guy for mentioning milk jugs as starter pots last month.