How We Plant a Tomato

8/12/2019 How We Plant a Tomato

1/4

ow We Plant a Tomato

e Apple Farm's tomato plant sale will be held at 5311 Scotts Valley Drive in Scotts Valley (near Santa Cruz, CA) and will begin on Saturday, March 29,

continue EACH day until the end of May.

ow do we plant a tomato, you might ask? With a ridiculous amount of stuff in the hole, is the answer. When someo

pes me into telling them and I start the long answer, I eventually see their eyes glaze over. That's the point where I

hen you throw in the kitchen sink and cover it all up." To date, no one has laughed at that joke.

I think they're just either too overwhelmed by the reaff we put in there, or they actually believe we're throwing in a sink.

is is how we plant a tomato. First off, let's take a look at our sexy specimen here on the left.

e started this beauty in our heated greenhouse in late January. We potted it up to a gallon container about 3 or 4 weeo. It will go into one of our freshly prepared beds, shown to the right.

e tomatoes are placed three feet apart. I've learned over the years that spacing them closer than that means less fruig a nice deep hole to accommodate all the additions - the exact depth is dependent upon how tall the seedling is that

rt with. We want the plant to be almost completely submerged into the soil, and the fish head and amendments put

e hole need to be covered with a bit of soil, so we plan accordingly for the depth. This particular hole ends up being

most two feet deep, and is ready for our first goody, these impressive fish heads.e get them from the restaurant we grow for, Manresa. You might be able to get them free from a good butcher or

hmonger. I even know of someone who called a few restaurants in their area and was quickly rewarded with a niceunty of juicy fish heads. Fish tails, spines, guts, as well as shrimp, crab, or lobster shells are all good as well. Som

u may worry about critters digging these up later. We've never had a problem with animals digging up my tomatoe

d we've got three dogs, two cats, and what seem like an endless supply of raccoons living on the property. I stress tint that this is the first thing that goes into our very deep planting hole. That may help keep it from getting dug up.

n see the six inch long fish head staring up at us from the bottom of the hole here:


2/4

you're reticent to put the fish head in the hole, or simply can't get your mitts on any, we recommend using fish meal

bstitute. Two handfuls is about right. We get ours from Gardner & Bloome.

e next thing that goes into the hole are a couple of aspirin tablets and some crushed chicken egg shells.

The aspirin is to help jump start the plant's immune system. You can read more aboutence here. We'll put three or four crushed egg shells into the hole as well. You can see our three colors of eggs fro

ncy chickens - yes, those are green eggs in there. The eggs supply a nice calcium boost, which will help prevent blos

d rot, that nasty brown patch on the bottom of tomatoes that lack calcium (the fish head bones and bone meal also h

th that).

Bone meal is the next to go into the hole. We put in a heaping handful of bone meal. This ce organic phosphorus source, which is essential for blossom production. More blossoms, more fruit. Bone meal al

creases calcium availability for the tomato. This is also a Gardner & Bloomeproduct.

e then put in two handfuls of Gardner & Bloome's Tomato, Vegetable and Herb Fertilizer. It's an all-purpose organ

tilizer that contains the essential macronutrients of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassiun. Their mix is a very nice 4-6ose nutrients.


3/4

e also recommend putting a handful of pure worm castings in the bottom of the hole. We amend our beds with wor

stings and we also spray a worm casting tea on the plants while they grow. Really great stuff. Worm castings are

ailable for sale at our tomato plant sale.

The hole is complete (sans kitchen sink) and we're now ready to pop in the tomato plant. m off the lower leaves, be there one, two, three or more, leaving only the top-most leaves.

e put an inch or two of soil on top of the amendments in the hole. The plant is eased out of the pot, and before it's pthe hole, I sprinkle a third of a cup or more on the rootball with a product called Xtreme Gardening's Mykos, which

ycorrhizal fungi that attaches to the roots, growing as the root ball grows. It protects the plant from some diseases, verticillium and fusarium wilts. If there are any "silver bullets" here, it is this healthy addition of mycorrhizal fung

nce the tomato is in the hole, we double check the depth by judging how far out of the ground the plant will be

cking. If it's going to be too far down, we'll remove the plant and add so

ore soil. If it looks like it'll be up above the soil more than we want, that's too bad because we ain't gonna be fishing

em fish parts and all that other stuff up out of that hole and digging it deeper. No siree. So we try our best to gauge

pth of the hole according to the height of the plant we're putting in. We then back fill GENTLY - only one quasi-firm

sh settles the soil around the plant. Please do not man-handle the soilound the plant by stomping on it or pressing too hard. That's not necessary and it expels all the air out of the

l. Believe it or not, the roots need oxygen down there just as much as they need nutrients and water.


4/4

temporary well is then made around the plant base to catch the first

tering. The first watering is the most critical. We do it multiplemes. Water it in once, twice, three times at least. Wait a few minutes to allow the water to drain through. If you ha

ep hole, likely way more than 12 inches deep, you will be amazed at how much water it will take to wet the root bal

ot or more under the ground. So don't be stingy with the water the first day. Thereafter, you can back off thetering. Here's our finished bed. You can see the tomatoes are spaced pretty far apart:

ip irrigation will be repositioned on the bed, and staking and mulching has yet to be done. In the meantime, please

e to email us or leave a comment below with any questions.

you're still not getting the results you want, then consider taking our Tomato Masters class.

ou can find more information all about tomatoes on the World Tomato Societywebsite. The site is open to the publ

til June 15, 2014. If you'd like to join the World Tomato Society to receive all of the member benefits, you can sign

re.

Documents

How We Plant a Tomato