The Best Bagged Soil for Tomatoes, Premium Potting Mixes

Your local garden center is probably filled with several commercial potting mixes for your garden. Knowing which one is the best bagged soil for tomatoes will help maximize your success during the growing season.

The Top Choice for the Best Bagged Soil Mix for Tomatoes

There are so many variables to think about when getting ready to plant your tomatoes. Do you go with organic? Peat moss? Just buy compost? Let’s break this down together, shall we?

What to Consider When Picking the Best Potting Soil

• Versatility – WHAT else will you plant with that soil? If you are going to companion plant another vegetable with your tomatoes, make sure that you plant in soil conditions that satisfy both kinds of plants. They may have different needs.
• Space – WHERE will you plant these tomatoes? Supply your in-ground garden with specific amendments by using bagged soil.
• Budget – HOW much soil do you need to buy? Just a bag for your container or do you need to fill a large raised bed?

Our Top Picks : Buying Guide for Best Potting Soils With Organic Matter

These are the top-selling bagged soils that are easily found in stores for most consumers.

Best Overall Organic Potting Soil for Tomatoes: Foxfarm Ocean Forest Organic Potting Soil

This soil is by far the best all around soil for your tomatoes. It’s nutrient dense, has a neutral pH, and it works well with tomatoes in any stage of growth. You can use it in your raised bed or in pots.

Best Bagged Soil With Peat Moss: Jungle Growth Pro Mix

Sphagnum peat moss is a bit of a controversial subject amongst green growers these days. It’s an excellent additive to any growing medium because it’s organic and retains moisture.

However, it’s not a sustainable resource since it takes thousands of years to produce. Peat moss is basically forest humus, comprised of organic matter broken down over time.

Best Sustainable Soil for Moisture Retention: Epsoma Organic Potting Mix

An alternative to Jungle Growth is Epsoma’s Organic Potting Mix with perlite. This organic additive is a kind of glass naturally occurring from volcanic rock. It has a high capability of holding water. Perlite is easily mined with low environmental impact making it a favorite for moisture retention.

Best Soil Mix for Growing Tomatoes: Sun Gro Black Gold All Organic Potting Soil

This one has all of the essential nutrients that tomatoes need to thrive. It also holds moisture and contains organic fertilizers. The down side? It only comes in smaller bags, making it a pricey soil for your vegetable garden.

Best Soil for Raised Garden Beds: Miracle-gro Performance Organics All-purpose Mix

Now don’t roast me alive for this company’s product as an option in your food garden. This one is made with natural ingredients, making it OMRI-approved for organic growing. It’s a nice, loose soil that has enough nutrition to feed your plants for up to three months.

Best Soil for Young Tomato Plants: Foxfarm Strawberry Fields Organic Potting Soil

I absolutely love this bagged soil for germinating my tomato seeds. The finer soil structure gives me the best results for starting seeds in small pot. It also feeds those baby seedlings for a long time while they wait to go in the ground.

The Absolute Best Soil Mix for Container Garden Tomatoes: Pro-mix Organic Vegetable

It’s not called “pro-mix” for nothing. The professionals use this most often. It holds moisture really well with its added coco coir making it good for container gardens.

However, it simultaneously offers good drainage, and once its dried out, Pro-Mix can become hydrophobic making it difficult to rehydrate.

Best Potting Soil for Tomatoes With Worm Castings: Foxfarm Happy Frog Organic Potting Soil

Earthworm castings are chock full of nutrition for your vegetable garden. Since tomatoes are such heavy feeders, using Happy Frog is a great way to grow healthy plants. I like to use this most frequently by surrounding my transplants with it when they go in the garden.

What Type of Tomatoes Should I Grow?

First, decide on what your needs are. Should you grow indeterminate tomatoes so that you have a succession of fresh fruits coming in all season long? Or determinate tomatoes for a large harvest all at once. Determinates remain on the smaller side and work well for containers too.

Additionally, are you looking to save seeds from the fruits for planting next year? You will need an open-pollinated seed to do so. Heirlooms provide delicious flavor, but they can be trickier to grow.

I recommend talking to a local grower in your area, and see what they suggest. Gleaning the experience from an old-timer gardener is priceless.

I also like to grow a little bit of everything. Hybrids for vigor, heirlooms for flavor, determinates for large harvests, and indeterminates for a continuous harvest.

Getting Started With Tomato Gardening

Let’s take a look at how to get started with tomato gardening, now that you have some good choices of bagged soil mixes

Essentials for Tomato Gardening

Tomato plants need these basic necessities to thrive and produce healthy tomatoes for your harvest basket.

• Sunshine
• Space
• Growing Media
• Seeds
• Water
• Nutrients

Where to Plant Tomatoes

Plant your tomatoes in a place that gets all of the above essentials for growing. Full Sun is crucial to these warm-weather loving plants. Also, give them enough space so that air flow keeps foliage dry. They have extensive root systems too, so don’t make them compete with one another by planting to close together.

Choose appropriate growing media, from our top picks already listed. Make sure that your soil is holding enough moisture for your plants to drink up. Use soil amendments as needed to keep healthy tomato plants.

Garden Design

However you choose to design your garden space, make sure that you create the environment for you and your plants.

“The best medicine for the garden is the gardener.” – Chinese Proverb

That means that you should create an inviting space for yourself. Make this a place to rest and maybe sip some coffee or tea so that you’ll want to spend time in your garden. You will easily catch any problems that may arise if you’re there to see them.

Gardens

Here are some different ways that you could incorporate tomatoes into your gardens.

• Container Gardens: large pots on your patio
• Landscaping: a fruitful vine climbing your window trellis adds charm
• Herb Gardens: basil and oregano companion well with tomatoes
• Organic Gardens: obviously every organic garden would welcome tomatoes
• Tomato Gardens: perhaps you’re not interested in growing anything else
• Urban Gardens: tomatoes can be added to any garden, even small spaces
• Vegetable Gardens: adding tomatoes to vegetable garden is easy

When to Plant Tomatoes

Tomatoes are a frost tender crop grown during the warm season. You can start seeds indoors six weeks before your last frost date in the Spring. Transplant out to the garden after frost danger has passed.

Seasonal

So they love warm weather, but they don’t like hot weather. Blooms fall off of tomato plants before setting fruit in temperatures above 85°. They also don’t like a humid atmosphere, easily succumbing to disease.

Warm, dry weather is the best season to grow healthy, productive tomato plants.

Garden Calendar

Knowing your growing zone is vital to understanding your growing seasons. There are many garden planners out there to assist you in your own planting and harvesting dates. I like to use Seedtime , an online calendar with a free version.

How to Start Tomato Seeds Indoors

You can start your own tomato seedlings indoors before your garden is ready to be planted.

You’ll need:

• seeds
• pots
• soil
• lights

Growing Tomatoes From Seed

You can purchase any tomato seeds from any reputable company online, or in your nearest big box store. I recommend hybrid varieties for beginners as they tend to be hardier plants.

Seeds

All seeds have a sell by date as required by law, but that doesn’t mean they’ve expired.

Never throw away seeds. You may get a lower germination rate as they age, but you’ll always get something. It’s always better to plant old seeds to see what you can get.

Heirloom seeds can be saved from the fruits you’ve harvested to plant next year. Store seeds in a cool, dry, dark place to retain optimal germination rates.

Sowing and Sprouting

Choose deep pots since tomatoes have long, complex root systems. Choose your bagged soil (Foxfarm Strawberry Fields would be my choice), and your seed variety.

Drop one seed in each pot, cover them over with 1/4″ soil, water them well, and watch them sprout. Once, germinated, young tomato seedlings will need grow lights placed directly over them.

Selecting Tomato Seedlings

Choose the strongest seedlings for planting out in your garden or moving to their permanent growing containers. Anything that looks weak, yellow, or has spots on it should be discarded.

Soil

Clay soil, rocky soil, or sandy soil will need to be amended before planting your tomatoes in the ground. Sandy loam soil is optimal for any vegetable garden. You may want to consider if amending with topsoil vs garden soil vs potting soil may help.

Be sure to break up your growing space a little before planting. A broadfork is a good way to break through soil compaction with minimal disruption to the soil life.

How to Move Them Outside

Tomato plants will need to be slowly moved outside. They aren’t used to harsh growing conditions when they’re started indoors and under lights.

“Harden off” your seedlings by moving them outside during the low sun hours of the day, and then bring them back inside. Give them a little more time outside everyday, slowly increasing their sun exposure time.

Once they’ve spent an entire day outside in the sun and wind, you can safely transplant your tomatoes into your garden.

Transplanting Tomatoes

Foxfarm Happy Frog is my favorite bagged soil to use for transplanting tomatoes. It provides nutrients and perfect soil medium to retain moisture around the roots.

Plant tomatoes deeply, bringing the soil level all the way up to the bottom of the first leaves of the plant. They’ll look like baby plants again, but that’s okay. They’re about to shoot up and grow lots of stems and foliage.

Ideal Container Size for Tomatoes

Since tomatoes have such deep root systems, you’ll need large containers for full sized plants. One plant to a 10 gallon pot is not unreasonable for healthy root development. Maximum root growth allows for optimal fruit production.

Keeping Them Healthy, Tomato Plant Care and Maintenance

Tomatoes can be finicky plants when grown in less-than-desirable conditions, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Follow these tips for keeping your tomatoes healthy.

Watering

Under-watering tomatoes will result in slow growth and less fruit production. Over-watering will cause a calcium deficiency resulting in blossom end rot.

Check the soil beneath the surface with your finger to see if it’s moist. If it’s dry, your soil needs to be watered more frequently.

Mulching

Mulch helps the soil retain water for the plant and keeps weeds from sprouting around your vegetable plants. Check out our practical mulching tips to help you decide which ground cover is best for you.

Fertilizing

Since tomatoes are heavy feeders, you’ll need nutrient dense soil to keep them happy. Side dressing my plants with compost is my favorite way to fertilize tomatoes. A weekly application of a liquid fertilizer like fish emulsion makes a nice foliar spray.

Pruning

Determinate tomatoes don’t need to be pruned much. Just make sure the stems and leaves have plenty of air flow, and trim off any branches that are getting splashed from the ground.

Indeterminate tomatoes will continue to grow and vine until the frost kills them. Prune back any suckers for the best fruit production. This tutorial shows you how to easily trim your plants.

Training and Support

Tomato plants are vines and will crawl along the ground as they grow if allowed. The ground is where insects and disease find them. Instead, give them a sturdy trellis to climb.

Those popular tomato cages are usually too flimsy to offer any real support. Use anything else. My favorite is a system of t-posts and cattle panels.

Tomato Plant Pests and Disease Problems

Tomatoes are one of the more difficult plants to keep healthy in the Southeast USA. Our muggy, warm climate is ripe for pests and disease.

Plant Disease

The most common tomato plant diseases we see are early blight, leaf spot, late blight, and blossom end rot. Some of these are more easily controlled than others.

Preventing disease is nearly impossible. Keeping a healthy, living soil helps tremendously.

Wild Birds

Bird netting is a great way to keep birds out of small spaces. It doesn’t make sense to drape netting over a large garden though.

It’s easier to trick the birds. Lure them away with a nearby birdfeeder.

Some say that they peck at fruits because they need water, and keeping a bird bath in the garden prevents them from eating your tomatoes.

Pest Control

Stink bugs, horn worms, white flies and more can take out your tomato crop in no time. We have all the information that you need to organically treat your plants for pests.

Harvest & Storage

You’ve done the hardest part right? Maybe. Depending on how bountiful your harvest is will determine how much work you still have ahead of you.

Harvesting and storing garden produce often gets neglected by overwhelmed gardeners, but I encourage you to finish the race strong. You’ll be so thankful that you did.

How to Harvest Tomatoes

I find it best to harvest my tomatoes when they’ve “blushed.” That is to say they’ve begun to ripen about a third of the way.

They have developed their best flavor at this point, and taking them now means that pests can’t get them. Allow them to fully ripen on the kitchen counter before eating them.

How to Store Tomatoes

Tomatoes can be stored in the refrigerator for about a week before they begin to rot. Use them up or process them for later.

Storing them in Ziplock bags in the freezer is great because they slip right out of the skins when thawed. This makes canning or cooking with your homegrown tomatoes easy.

FAQs

Here some other questions that new gardeners frequently ask about the best bagged soil for tomatoes.

What is the Best Soil Mix for Tomatoes in Grow Bags?

The same recommendation of Pro-mix Organic Vegetable for container gardening is your best option for grow bags. Make sure that you water them well as grow bags tend to dry out faster.

Is Miracle Grow Potting Soil Good for Tomatoes?

Sure. But here’s the kicker. I’d prefer Miracle Grow’s ORGANIC potting soil for my food garden.

Can You Grow Tomatoes in a Bag of Potting Soil?

I don’t see why not, although the root system is going to reach far below the bag of soil. Make sure that you cut holes in the bottom of the bag so they can reach through.

Why Do Tomatoes Grown in Containers Often Need Potting Mix Rather Than Potting Soil?

“Mix” often means that the soil has added components to hold water. Perlite, peat moss, and vermiculite are some examples of what you might consider keeping in your potting mix for containers.

Can I Make My Own Potting Mix?

Absolutely. Bagged soil takes the guess work out for new gardeners. However, you can easily make your own potting mix with any number of things.

Best Homemade Soil Mix

A 50/50 mix of peat moss and mushroom compost, and a handful of blood meal is my favorite.

Summary

In short, I’ve found the best bagged soil for tomatoes to be Foxfarm Ocean Forest Organic Potting Soil. But you can’t go wrong with any of the soils and mixes that we’ve mentioned here if you follow this brief guide to growing tomatoes.

Happy Tomato Gardening!