My grandpa unexpectedly bought me some tomato transplants and some seed for squash, zuccini, and beans. I went ahead and planted the tomatos last night. Our family has found the Better Boy hybrid strain to be one of the best growing cultivars for our area. I planted 4 of them. It will be interesting to see if there is a significant difference between these transplants and the heirloom varieties whose seeds I’ll be starting later this week. The transplants are being put in a little early (with some hope/faith that there won’t be a late frost) and the seeds will be started a little late. We’ll see.
Above you’ll see my four planting spaces. The way I do it is to space them all at least 3 feet from each other, build up a little dome of soil, and then smooth the dome out until it is mostly flat on top but with a slight bowl. The purpose of this method is to raise the plant up a little so that it doesn’t end up in standing water after a big rain (potential for root rot or other diseases), but the bowl helps collect rain from small showers toward the plant.
I also saw an article in Organic Gardening magazine about planting tomatoes at an angle. It’s supposed to create stronger roots. It seems to me that all you’re doing is creating shallower roots. So I decided to do an experiment: I planted the front left and back right plants at an angle and the front right and front left plants straight up and down. We’ll see if there’s a difference in how well they do. Here’s what it looks like to plant a tomato plant at an angle:
(pardon the multiple posts, I don’t have these photos hosted anywhere so I don’t know how else to do multiple pictures in a post)
3 years ago