Real deep.
Tomatoes need a lot of water and nutrients from the soil. A nursery plant has been grown in a little container to make a good impression on you at the store. The grower has pumped a lot of nitrogen into that plant to make it look green and leafy on the shelf.
With most transplants your inclination is to plant it so that the soil in the little planter box (the crown) is just about the same depth as the surface of your garden. That might be fine for trees, but it's way too shallow for tomatoes.
"Otherwise you get this great big plant, and little bitty root system to feed it," says Erin Hofer, education coordinator at the Plano Community Garden.
Look carefully at the transplant in the store. See the little "hairs" on the plant stem? Each one of those is a potential root that can feed the plant.
How deep? Tommy Tomato at the nursery said three inches over the crown. One of my transplants had directions to bury 80 percent of the plant.
Erin has the most radical plan of all.
"Dig a trench, and put the tomato to bed. water the trench,, lay him down, and cover him up, all except for the top two leaves! Then water the top."
Erin said concievably you could just dig a hole straight down, exposing the top leaves, but with our heavy clay or caliche so near the surface, that might be tough. A trench and bury system should be enough.
I'm going to try it with half my tomatoes this summer. The second half will be buried three inches above the crown, and the third half will go in with 80 percent buried.
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