large tomato plant

Planting Tomatoes

tomatoes on wood tablecindy in front of tomato plantIt’s May, and time to plant tomato plants in most of California. With chance of frost behind us, and summer just around the corner, I am planting my tomato seedlings into the garden. I bought a variety of seedlings from a local farm, Love Apple Farms. This is one of my plants from last summer. It eventually reached the top of the cage. these recommendations came from Love Apple Farms.

Here’s what I add to the soil when planting.

tomato planting1_web

To each plant I add:
Fish Meal, 2 handfuls
Bone Meal, 1 handful
Gardener & Bloome dry organic fertilizer for veggies (4-6-3), 2 handfuls
Pure worm castings, 1 handful
Aspirin tablets, 2
Crushed egg shells, several
Mychorizzal fungae, ⅓ cup (I use Mykos Mychorizzae)

Start by digging a two foot deep hole, or as deep as you can get to this.
Add the above ingredients into the hole.
(My egg shells had color because they were left over from Easter!)

_MG_6349_web    hole for tomato plant

Plant the tomato very deep, remove some of the lower leaves and plant half way up the stock. Here are before and after planting. You can see that much of the stem is under ground when it was planted.

IMG_6853_web   _MG_6360_web   IMG_6857_web

 

IMG_4345_web

Once the plants grow a little larger, I use a 10 foot high tomato cage made out of concrete wire, and stake it down with a short piece of rebar to keep the cage in place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

tomatoes in a basket

Watch the video to see the planting in action.

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email