One of our all-time favorite tomatoes is the Tumbling Tom Tomato. This cascading tomato plant is perfect for pots, and is a good producer of larger-sized orange-yellow cherry tomatoes that are meaty and great for salads or making sauces.
Tumbling Tom pairs perfectly in pots with pepper plants, so you can have a salsa garden in a container! Plant Tumbling Tom, and a Jalapeno plant, and then tuck in some cilantro or green onions. Or grow it with basil or bush beans for the perfect food garden in a pot on your patio. Grow the Tumbling Tom in a large container if possible, with plenty of height, so it can cascade over the side and produce a lot of large orange cherry tomatoes for salads and salsas.
We have another truly dwarf tomato plant called the Tiny Tim Tomato, shown in photo above, who lives up to his name and stays quite compact while producing bundles of regular sized cherry tomatoes. Happy in a pot, the Tiny Tim Tomato takes up hardly any room and can be grown with flowers and herbs for a pretty and productive container. For a container food garden, plant a Tiny Tim Tomato, plus a Jalapeño or other pepper of choice, plus direct sow some Cilantro or Green Onions between the two. You can also pair Tiny Tim with Basil or other herbs, and nitrogen-fixing Bush Beans which can be direct sown in pots to help feed the plants and you!
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If you live in a growing region with winters like us, it's best to start your tomato seeds and pepper seeds indoors about 4-6+ weeks before your last expected frost in the spring. Pepper seeds can be started about a week or two earlier than tomatoes, because they take longer to germinate, and do not grow as quickly as tomatoes. If they start to outgrow their starting pots, transplant them into bigger, deeper pots if possible to let their roots keep growing larger. Transplant peppers when it's at least 50-60˚F at night consistently, they don't like to be cold! If you plant them in a pot that is moveable, you can relocate them indoors or to a protected spot like a garage or small hoop house to keep them warm on cold nights that drop below 45˚ F. Peppers don't like those cold temps! Tomatoes can handle them a little better, but they too should be kept above 40˚ F if possible.
You can start basil from seeds inside a few weeks before the last frost, or direct sow seeds outside once all chance of frost has passed. You can direct sow a lot of other seeds like bush beans and bunching onions to fill in spaces in containers or garden beds, they make great and useful edible companion plants. It's important to keep seeds moist during the germination period, so don't let them dry out completely. You also don't want overly soggy soil, which can easily rot seeds or drown young seedlings. Containers with potting mix are great to direct sow in, as potting soil drains very well and pots with proper drainage holes allow excess water out.
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