We have a lot of knowledgeable people on this board, let share some ideas: How do you plant your tomatoes?

I've planted 4 this year: Early Girl, Sun Gold, Brandy Wine and trying Pineapple for the first time.

I'll dig a hole about 2 feet by 2 feet by one shovel deep. Add compost and mix it with the soil as I refill the hole. Water and let the soil settle over night.

The next day, dig a small hole for the plant. Add egg shells and "Tomatoes Alive" fertilizer. Add the plant, fill the hole and pat down the soil. Then I place a black plastic tray around the plant. I believe it is called the Tomatoizer. It is sold by various catalogs. Then install a gage around the plant while it is small. Install the drip irrigations with a one gallon dripper next to the plant and one into the plastic tray (the tray has 4 holes for the water to go into the ground.

This year Ill try to remember to fertilize after the fruit are set. Im saving some egg shells and crushing them with a mortar and pestle. Ill also add "Tomatoes Alive".

What is your method?

Thanks,

Ernie

Throw 'em in the ground, slap on a 6' cage , toss in some compost and let er rip.

I tuck them into the soil in my tires. I topdress once the weather has warmed up considerably with a mix of kelp meal, glacial rock dust, greensand, gypsum, azomite and rock phosphate mixed with a little manure, and stake them with bamboo stakes, about seven feet tall. Tie them up as they grow so they aren't all sprawled out on the ground.

Hi Ernie, I usually plant around 40+ plants, so if I had to do what you do it would cost me a bundle... Frankly, I no longer have the patience to fuss much over each plant, so I prepare the beds in the fall with compost, bone meal, ashes, manure and whatever else sounds suitable at the moment (without tilling, just layering), then in the spring I wait until the soil is warm enough, usually the beginning of May in Indiana, then I dig holes in which I toss some more bone/blood meal, place the seedlings with a cardboard collar around them, cover them leaving out two sets of leaves and water. Later I try to cage or stake them. By August my plants are some 6-7 feet tall, and there is no way to really support them. I am not sure my method is the best, but so far it seems to be working. I just wish I knew how to keep the tomato plants upright!
Gardpro zone 5b

Why egg shells?
I have had several BAD tomatoe years so I really need the help. Spindly things with little fruit.
The soil suck, but each year I try to add to it.
Tilled for the first 2 years and the last two I have put the stuff on top.
I dig a hole, put compost it it, refill the hole and plant the plant, then cages.
I do not fertilise....
I water and have watered with a sprinkler until last year when I read that it was bad as it promoted disease ti spread. My veggie garden has been a bust!

I prepare the bed in the fall with compostable leaves, coffee grinds, etc. I plant my starters in the bed a little later than the last frost date, when I see volunteers coming up. Thats how I know the soil is warm enough.

Eggshells provide calcium. Tomatoes need calcium.

Hello fellow gardeners,
I plant my tomatoes with a posthole digger. 1 digger deep with Basic Slag, compost, and egg shells. I then water well with compost tea that I brew in a 33 gallon garbage can. It really does work too! Good luck to all of you this year in the garden.

Ed

I used to plant tomatoes in a wire cage, but now I think those things are useless, at least for the indeterminates.

Now they grow up nylon braided ropes. The ropes are attached at the top to a cross brace 7 feet up and at the bottom to the raised bed frame. They get much taller than 7 feet, eventually.

I've ALWAYS pinched the suckers off the plants, but after a very devisive debate last year on "suckering" (no references to the 2 party system in full swing this year...) I've chosen not to pinch some of my plants this season as a test.

I'm going to grow 2 plants of each variety and pinch one and not the other.

Should I grow them side by side or have a "pinch plot" and a "control plot"? hm, food for thought. They'll both get the same fertilizer, compost teas and corn meal (or copper, depending on the situation) sprays.

I plant them way deep, with just the top leaves out of the soil. I don't dig anything into the soil, just top-dress with cottonseed meal, because our water here is VERY alkaline.

I'm growing "Pineapple" this year too!

-nita

I plant mid to late March. This year, instead of digging lots of compost in, I just piled it on top of the bed. Then dug a hole, put in an all purpose organic vegie fertilizer, planted the (small, out of a 6 pack) tomato plants fairly deep, added meal worm castings, coffee grounds, and more compost on top. There's a handmade (by DH) concrete wire cage, about 6 feet tall, around each plant. The tomatoes do get a little taller than the cages, though with Celebrity not too tall, and then they kind of hang down off the top and do ok. This weekend I hope to put on a thick straw mulch, on top of a little more compost.

I am only 4'10". Do you use a ladder to pick the tomatoes?

I place wire cages, 4-5' tall, 3' in diameter on my raised beds. Each cage is 1/3-1/2 filled with leaves, grass etc. This anchors the cage. I plant 4 plants/cage just outside the wire and bury to first true leaves. Each hole gets a mix of blood or bone meal, rock phosphate, green sand, kelp meal and a t. epson salt mixes in prior to planting. A plastic collar (margarine tub etc,) goes around each plant. I water each plant until it is up and strong. I add mulch to bed at this time. Then I make a funnel shape in the leaves to water and feed in the center of the leaf filled ring. This encourages the roots to grow inward where moisture and food is retained. Plants are tied to the cage with strips of old t shirts. I pinch now and then as needed. These cages never fall over. When the crop is done, I leave the cages and contents to compost until I need to replant the bed, remover the cage and leave the contents as sheet mulch. Saw this method in the paper years ago...Oriental tomato ring.

I plant quite a few tomatoes every year, mostly heirloomers. I rotate the site every year with members of non-nightshade families. I rotate so there are no nightshades growing for three years.
This year I'm starting from scratch again, at a new garden. Last fall I was able to get lots of organic matter into the soil, and today I am turning in my finished compost.
I plant using a bulb-hole planter, which is quicker when you are planting 30+ tomatoes. I don't give the planting holes any amendments other than the compost, which always has lots of eggshells in it. I don't pinch 'suckers', as it is 'way too time consuming. Since most of my plants are indeterminate, I only shear off the top growth in early September to get the last greenies ripe before frost hits.
I used to use 1 x 1" wooden stakes in a tee-pee fashion. Now I use scrap vinyled chain link fence pieces, encircling each plant and secured with stout wire from the top by a 2 x 4 tent-like frame, 6 feet high. When and if frost is forecasted, I cover the row with bedsheets, just like a tent. I usually can squeeze another week or two of growing time.
Oh, I use lots of mulch, too, and underground water systems.

Husband. He's just 5' 10" but he can REach.

I plant mine sideways. Lots of compost and leaf mulch. I use concrete reinforcing wire (6X6" openings X 6'tall X 12 squares long) and support them with 3 T-posts because of the wind. This year I'm going to raise the cages up a couple feet and tie them to the T-posts to have taller cages. About 3' for an overall 9' tall cage.

Dirt