Transplanting Tomatoes to Garden

Hi all,
Just wondering how most of you handle your tomatoes when transplanting into the garden. Have seen a number of ways, stripping all but the top leaves and laying in a trench or burying them very deep. Or do most of you just plant without stripping any leaves? Should they be watered right away or wait a day for them to get acclimated? However it is done I would like to know your favorite way.

Sparks

There are probably as many methods as there are gardeners, Sparks. When Carolyn checks in, for instance, she'll tell you emphatically that nothing should go in the hole but soil and tomato plant. Other people do add things, however. I'm one of them.

The point is, every one of these methods is right! You do what works best for you, taking guidance from people who's opinions you trust. If their advice works for you, continue it. If it doesn't, try another method.

BTW, most of us (I'm as guilty as the next gardener) baby our seedlings far too much. Plants are a lot tougher than we give them credit for, and will withstand a lot of abuse.

My procedure: Hopefully the plants are at the exact right size (6-8 inches tall), so they don't have to be trenched. Instead, I plant them vertically to the top of the exposed stem. I've already repotted them twice, so don't strip a lot of leaves and stems at this point; maybe one or two of the lower branches is all. In the hole goes the contents of a book of paper matches; a tbls of epsom salts; and a handful of compost. These are mixed in good, and topped with more compost. Then the plant goes in, and the hold filled with soil. At this point I pour a heavy ring of dry milk around the plant. And the cage (I use homemade towers, built of remesh) put in place.

BTW, the plants are sited along the path of a drip irrigation line, which is how I water them.

I also am a believer in heavy mulching. I use grass clippings, straw, leaves, chopped branches---whatever organics are available and bring it to within 3 or 4 inches of the plant stem.

Last year, because of our long, cold spring, I did have to trench (some of my plants were pushing the 30" mark). The procedure is basically the same, except that the plants are laid in more or less horizontally, then bent (well, gently curved) upwards where they stick out of the ground.

Thanks Brook,
All very interesting. I have generally removed most branches leaving the tops. When I say most branches I mean, like you, I have trimmed lower leaves in repotting so not much more to trim. I then dig a hole with my post hole digger (manual of course) and set plant in leaving only about 4 inches of stem showing. Like you I do mulch, generally with straw but this year will use leaves that are almost composted. I was very lucky, yesterday got a load of free leaves from the city (they load) and unlike previous years they looked like they had been chopped up and very black stuff. Have high hopes for them.

Sparks

Here's a heretic's method:

In an ultimate emergency, like you have too many lanky tomatoes and too little time to plant them properly, strip off the bottom leaves, and just lay the rootball on the naked soil. Prop up the stem with a brick, etc, and heap soil high over the rootball. Water well.

As long as the roots are well covered, and kept moist, they'll find their own way into the soil and the stem will grow erect.

Of course, it works only with very friable soil. Don't try it on clay!

But it does work....

Brook, what is the heavy ring of dry milk for? I'll be planting my tomatoes this week so maybe I need to do something different.

I plant in raised planters and I usually pile on leaves in the fall and during the winter every so often I mixed them in. A couple of days before planting I spred an inch or so of compost or chicken manure and mix in, by then the leaves are pretty much gone. Then I dig a hole deep enough so the tomato goes in up to the first leaves, put the drip line under the soil next to it and the cage over. I haven't had much luck with mulching because of the snails.

Hm, I venture a guess that it's to avoid Blossom End Rot.

Whereby hangs a controversial tail...

Right, Brook?

Hey, I've just discovered HTML!

This message was edited Sunday, Apr 20th 11:43 AM

Kathy, in reverse order:

In theory, where I am, I should have a lot of trouble with slugs. But for some reason I don't. I'm not knocking it, you understand, just making an observation. So mulching isn't a problem for me. I don't have gophers, either, which is another horror you have to deal with.

The amendments I use are often recognized by people for the wrong reasons. For instance, the epsom salts is not used to add magnesium---there's more than enough of that in virtually every soil to meet a tomato plant's needs. What it does is help release calcium in a usuable form, which is one way of staving off BER. Similarly, the matches are not to add sulphur, as is commonly thought, but to add phosphorous.

The powdered milk is to add an additional source of calcium.

Do these things _really_ do what I think they do? Maybe, and maybe not. But my attitude is that if something does no harm, and might be helping, then I'll use it.

And the fact is, when I don't use these amendments my tomato crop suffers. For instance, the only time I've ever suffered BER was the one year I neglected the epsom salts.

If you've been successful with the method you're using, why do you feel you have to try something different?

John,

Where were you last year when my tomatoes were like jungle plants? Wish I had thought of that idea then---it would have saved me a lot of time and work.

I hate trenching tomatoes, and try to not have to do it.

Taking this a step further, why dig a hole at all? If you set the root ball on the ground (with the plant vertical), and hill up around it, that should be no different to the tomato than planting it in the ground.

Brook

One good reason, not to just plonk a tomato rootball on the surface is that, the lateral roots have little chance to develop.

I discovered this last year. I set out 220 tomatoes on top of the soil, but... below each was a deep, rammed hole filled with friable compost. On top was a bottomless plastic pot, in which I'd put the rootball. I filled it with compost. Those plants grew magnificently!

Then I got lazy and just dumped some rootballs on the soil and surrounded them with a pile of soil. They grew okay. But the yield was a fraction that of those plants that had space for lateral root development.

My 'emergency' idea works fine, but... for maximum yield, you do need to give the lateral roots (ie. those coming off the lower stem) room to grow.