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Thursday, June 3, 2010

Tomato Planting 101

Want your tomato plants to look they're being grown by a pro? Follow these simple tips that Brad Gates from Wild Boar farms was nice enough to share with Arlene.

When you are ready to plant your tomato starts, remove the lowermost four branches of the plant. Dig a hole deep enough to cover the areas where the removed branches were. The small nodes leftover from where the removed branches were will become roots, and planting it deep in the soil will encourage root growth. This technique will also make your fully grown staked tomatoes look neat and less bushy.

Here is a great article about how to prune and care for tomatoes that goes into much more detail: http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/pruning-tomatoes.aspx

Pictured below are the tomato plants Wild Boar Farms gave to us. We can't wait to taste them! Check out their website: http://www.wildboarfarms.com/index_1.html, and see our earlier blog post to learn more about them and the tomato plants they so generously donated!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Lookin' good! I like the alyssum border too. (That is alyssum, right?) Might steal that idea for my backyard... :o)

brendalynn said...

Other parts of the University have quite a few home gardening resources, which you might find useful too.

For instance, "Growing Tomatoes in the Home Garden" by University of California farm advisors and master gardeners. It's online at http://ucanr.org/repository/fileaccess.cfm?article=54222&p= ZKXKHX