Once you have started your favorite tomato varieties by seed, and the garden soil outside reaches at least 50-60 degrees F at night, you’ll be ready to transplant your young tomato plants into your garden.
If you want to ensure healthy tomato plants, there are a few steps you’ll want to take when planting them into the ground.
- Instead of digging a “hole”, aim for more of a “trench”. Make it about a foot long in length.
- Loosen the soil.
- Amend the soil with compost.
- Add a little “slow-release” fertilizer into the trench as well.
- Remove the leaves and branches along the stem, leaving several of the ones at the top of the plant.
- Lay your tomato plant horizontally into the trench and position the top of the plant upwards, gently.
- Fill in the trench with soil, leaving the top of your tomato plant sticking up out of the ground with several healthy leaves. The stem of the plant should mostly be under the soil if you’ve followed these steps correctly.
By using this method of planting your tomato plants, you’ll encourage more roots to grow along the entire length of the stem, below the surface of the soil. The end game will be a stronger, more vigorous and overall healthier tomato plant.
Original article can be found at: “SeedsNow.com“
Hello
Uog. Actually i want to grow up tomatoes crops in my home lawn. Kindly tell
me the procedure how much quantity are required for grow the tomatoes crop
and temperature. I am waiting for your response. Please reply me as soon as
possible.
I have to add what I do for my tomatoes, that makes them grow like CRAZY and produce HUGE amounts of tomatoes all summer and into the fall — and a HUGE harvest at the end of the season that I share with friends & neighbours (I seriously need to learn how to can!).
Anyway, my “trick” is to dig a much bigger & wider hole than necessary, then line the hole with shredded newspaper (NOT flyers, JUST newspaper, the ink is vegetable-based), then line the newspaper with a layer of compost & any potting soil I’m emptying from planters, then another layer or two of shredded newspaper. I wet it all down carefully (to keep it in layers) before planting, then back-fill the hole with soil, compost & another layer of newspaper. Obviously the compost is good for the tomato but the reason I add newspaper is that it helps to hold onto water at the root zone (the compost adds nutrients, of course). Where I live, the soil is heavy & clay-ey so it helps to make it sponge-ey around the plant. Tomato roots can grow many feet outside its “drip zone” — I have found roots up to 3 – 4 FEET away from the main stem! The newspaper also attracts earthworms, which leave behind their castings, which the tomatoes LOVE. I actually bought a paper shredder from Costco specifically for my garden! It was well worth it!