How I Plant a Tomato

Love Apple Farm's spring plant sale will be held at 5311 Scotts Valley Drive in Scotts Valley (near Santa Cruz, CA) and will begin on Saturday, March 26, 2022 (unless you want to pick up pre-ordered plants earlier). Our sale in 2022 will be held Thursdays through Mondays (we are closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays) and continue every day until the first weekend in June.  Click here  to access the pre-sale site.

How do we plant a tomato, you might ask?  With a ridiculous amount of stuff in the hole, is the answer. When someone ropes me into telling them and I start the long answer, I eventually see their eyes glaze over. That's the point where I say, "Then you throw in the kitchen sink and cover it all up."  To date, no one has laughed at that joke. I think they're just either too overwhelmed by the real stuff we put in there, or they actually believe we're throwing in a sink.

This is how we plant a tomato. First off, let's take a look at our sexy specimen here on the left.

We started this beauty in our heated greenhouse in late January. We potted it up to a gallon container about 3 or 4 weeks ago. It will go into one of our freshly prepared beds, shown to the right. 

The tomatoes are placed three feet apart. I've learned over the years that spacing them closer than that means less fruit.  We dig a nice deep hole to accommodate all the additions - the exact depth is dependent upon how tall the seedling is that you start with. We want the plant to be almost completely submerged into the soil, and the fish head and amendments put into the hole need to be covered with a bit of soil, so we plan accordingly for the depth. This particular hole ends up being almost two feet deep, and is ready for our first goody, these impressive fish heads.
You might be able to get them free from a good butcher or fishmonger. I even know of someone who called a few restaurants in their area and was quickly rewarded with a nice bounty of juicy fish heads. Fish tails, spines, guts, as well as shrimp, crab, or lobster shells are all good as well. Some of you may worry about critters digging these up later. We've never had a problem with animals digging up my tomatoes, and we've got two dogs, six cats, coyotes, and what seem like an endless supply of raccoons living on the property. I stress the point that this is the first thing that goes into our very deep planting hole.  That may help keep it from getting dug up. You can see the six inch long fish head staring up at us from the bottom of the hole here:
If you're reticent to put the fish head in the hole, or simply can't get your mitts on any, we recommend using fish meal as a substitute. Half a cup is about right. We get ours from G&B.

The next thing that goes into the hole are a couple of aspirin tablets and some crushed chicken egg shells. The aspirin is to help jump start the plant's immune system. You can read more about that science here. We'll put three or four crushed egg shells into the hole as well. You can see our three colors of eggs from our fancy chickens - yes, those are green eggs in there. The eggs supply a nice calcium boost, which will help prevent blossom end rot, that nasty brown patch on the bottom of tomatoes that lack calcium (the fish head bones and bone meal also help with that).

Bone meal is the next to go into the hole. We put in a half cup of bone meal.  This is a nice organic phosphorus source, which is essential for blossom production.  More blossoms, more fruit. Bone meal also increases calcium availability for the tomato. This is also a G&B product. 

We then put in half cup of G&B's Tomato, Vegetable and Herb Fertilizer. It's an all-purpose  organic fertilizer that contains the essential macronutrients of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Their mix is a very nice 4-6-3 of those nutrients.

We also recommend putting a third cup of pure worm castings in the bottom of the hole. We amend our beds with worm castings and we also spray a worm casting tea on the plants while they grow.  Really great stuff. Worm castings, as well as the G&B products, are available for sale at our tomato plant sale.

 

The hole is complete (sans kitchen sink) and we're now ready to pop in the tomato plant. We trim off the lower leaves, be there one, two, three or more, leaving only the top-most leaves.

We put an inch or two of soil on top of the amendments in the hole. The plant is eased out of the pot, and before it's placed in the hole, I sprinkle about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of a product called Mykos on the rootball. This is a mycorrhizal fungi that attaches to the roots, growing as the roots grow. It protects the plant from some diseases, such as verticillium and fusarium wilts. This fungus also reaches out into the soil, grabs food for your tomato, and literally "feeds" it to the tomato root. If there are any "silver bullets" here, it is this healthy addition of mycorrhizal fungi. Mykos also creates a sponge-like mass around the roots that help them grab on to the water as it passes through the soil, helping save water.

Once the tomato is in the hole, we double check the depth by judging how far out of the ground the plant will be sticking.

If it's going to be too far down, we'll remove the plant and add some more soil.  If it looks like it'll be up above the soil more than we want, that's too bad because we ain't gonna be fishing them fish parts and all that other stuff up out of that hole and digging it deeper. No siree. So we try our best to gauge the depth of the hole according to the height of the plant we're putting in.

We then back fill GENTLY - only one quasi-firm push settles the soil around the plant.

Please do not man-handle the soil around the plant by stomping on it or pressing too hard. That's not necessary and it expels all the air out of the soil. Believe it or not, the roots need oxygen down there just as much as they need nutrients and water. 

A temporary well is then made around the plant base to catch the first watering. 

The first watering is the most critical. We do it multiple times. Water it in once, twice, three times at least.  Wait a few minutes to allow the water to drain through. If you have a deep hole, likely way more than 12 inches deep, you will be amazed at how much water it will take to wet the root ball a foot or more under the ground.  So don't be stingy with the water the first day. Thereafter, you can back off the watering.  It's our experience that most people water their tomatoes growing in raised beds or in the ground way too much. Here's our finished bed. You can see the tomatoes are spaced pretty far apart:

Drip irrigation will be repositioned on the bed, and staking and mulching has yet to be done. You can find out more about those items here.  In the meantime, please feel free to email us or leave a comment below with any questions.

If you're still not getting the results you want, then consider taking our Tomato Masters class.

Good luck, folks!

Comments

[rebecca]

My tomatoes from your plant sale are doing so incredibly well. I can believe how big they've grown already -- in San Francisco! They seem super healthy and hopefully well prepared for an SF summer.

[Jan C.]

Could you do an article on 8 foot tomato trellising? (if you have already, could you repost?) Thanks for the great information.

[Love Apple Farm]

To Leigh: Yes, all of those veggies would, but since we tend to plant MORE of those in the garden, then use your best judgment on whether you want to go to that extreme. Also remember that those fishheads have to be 2 feet deep in order to ward off marauding fish lovers.

[Leigh Parsons]

First off - thank you for a fantastic post! I've just finished re-working our garden beds for a new planting, and I am SOOO going to give your advice here a try. I live in Australia, so unfortunately cannot attend any of your classes :-( and being a beginner, I need all the help I can get! But never mind, I'll start with what you've presented here and go from there. I did have a question though - with regards to the additives you've presented above, will other flowering vegetables benefit from these (I'm thinking cucumbers, capsicums, pumpkins, maybe melons, snow peas)? Thanks in advance for any advice. Regards, Leigh.

[Aqua Castro de Milla]

My first tomato plants were not as I expected. I´m saving some fish heads,egg shells for that, but since I live in thr tropical area I wonder if your technique can be used with papayas and bananas. I would like to know.

[Alexis in San Jose]

Hi, please enter my comment in your drawing for the drip irrigation kit.
I've been growing tomatoes with varying degrees of success over the years, and finally decided to get serious this year. I bought 3 of your lovely plants and followed your instructions on planting them. My biggest mistake when I first starting growing tomatoes was overwatering (my soil is mostly clay) because the ground either looked dry, or the plants looked droopy. Last year, I planted only one plant and didn't have time to look at it very often. I hardly watered it at all. Voila! It did better than most of my tomatoes have in the past. I learned a valuable lesson! Looking forward to this year with LoveApple tomatoes! Thank you!

[Jan Carey]

I've always wanted 7 foot tomatoes. Thank you for sharing across the fence.

[Love Apple Farm]

John: No, you don't need to use any of the amendments when you pot up into a gallon container. New potting soil will have enough fertility in it for about three weeks, and by then, you'll be planting out into the garden. If you keep them in gallon containers for more than three weeks, start fertilizing them every couple of ways with a weak dilution of worm casting tea or other liquid organic fertilizer

[John]

Thank you for all the information! I am transplanting my tomatoes into a 1 gallon container. Do I use the same amendments that I would use in a 15 gallon container? I am not sure on the portions needed. All information is appreciated. This is my first time planting my garden in containers and applying your methods. Thank you. John

[amy]

Hi Cynthia, I'm curious if you pick the "suckers" at all. Do you do any type of pruning?
I planted exactly the way you posted and so far so good, although I am seeing some rolling of the leaves. Otherwise they look great! Thanks for all the help!

[B Purtell]

I recently got some chicken straw manure from a neighbor. I dug a small shovel of it into a hole and worked it into the soil adding compost and soil as well. I put this into 1 of 3 holes. Other holes 3 feet apart did not get the straw manure.

I watered the plants and put a staked marker identifying the plants. 2 days later, I looked to see how the plants were doing and they were gone from the hole and the mulch was all messed up. My guess was an animal dug it out. Could it be skunks? I planted 6 other tomato plants about 20 feet away in a raised bed area and those have not been touched.

Is it safe to use chicken manure? Now I fear planting any other tomatoes anywhere near this area.

Help

[Brian Carroll]

Just put 4 tomatoes in a raised bed and 2 cherry varieties in a half wine barrel. I followed the above instructions for the tomatoes but am wondering if it'd work for peppers and eggplants, minus planting them below the soil level.
Thanks. Brian

[Cathy Holt]

I used this method last year, but I was so swamped taking care of my parents and my sone last year I didn't get to staking them and they didn't so as well as they could've. Thanks for re-posting this.

[sunnlitt]

As others have commented, I really want to thank you for re-posting this article. I, too, was starting to look for it when it magically appeared.
It's raining this morning!! In the middle of May in California!

[Diane McClish]

OK...I'm excited...I just planted my first tomatos following your instructions. Can't wait to see how they grow...

[amy stephenson]

I picked up 3 of your plants at the SF Garden show, transplanted them to 1 gallon pots and just yesterday, put them in the ground following your recipe exactly (except used fish parts not the head--my fishmonger insisted that the parts would decompose more quickly--he was giving them to me for free -5lbs of parts--so I didn't want to offend him. ;-) Keeping my fingers crossed for a great harvest!

[Christy Slye]

I've been preparing my beds all week in anticipation of doing my tomato transplants. I thought, I'm going to check Love Apple as I know in the past there's been a list of what to throw in the hole. Hmmm, I hope I can find it--Imagine my delight when it was the first thing the blog opened to! Please continue to post this every year. I'm hopeful that if I can do some/most of this, my tomatoes will get some benefit. It gotta be better than just dumping the poor thing in the hole all by its lonesome.

[Tim Quitter]

Long-time home tomato gardener on the East Coast, specifically Virginia Beach, Va. I have had pretty good yields in the past with organic tomato fertilizers, bone meal and compost. But, last week I planted my seedlings using your method (less the Humic Acid and Root Zone spray). It just sounded too cool not to try. Interestingly, I had to visit about 6 fish markets and restaurants to find enough fish heads as most already had promised theirs to other tomato gardeners, and Va Bch is located right on the Ocean! One Rockfish (Striped Bass) could service four holes, head, tail and backbone cut in half! Cheers!

[Carolyn Binder]

Hi Cynthia:

This is my second year of raising heirloom tomatoes per your excellent instructions. I'm going to try and duplicate your tomatoe cages this year, too. Last year my tomatoes grew over eight feet tall! We had all the neighbors talking!

Thanks,

Carolyn Binder
http://www.cowlickcottagefarm.com

[Jan]

Wow! I am so impressed. I haven't had the yields I had previously about 4 years ago. This information should change that. Thank you for sharing your expertise. I will definitely look forward to taking a class sometime.

[Nants Foley]

I'm so glad I read this blog re-post. I created some seedlings from your heirloom tomato seed planting class. I have been watching over them like a mother hen over her chicks! I would have just dug a hole, slapped them in and called it a day! Hmmm...definitely have to start thinking about those fish heads.

[Kitty Thomas]

WOW...what a recipe! That is the second time I have heard of "unusual" things for tomatoes. Have you heard of putting hair down in the hole for a protein source? I am a new vegetable gardner and we are working towards eating out of our garden almost exclusively, so I better have success! I have 5 kinds of tomatoe starts, CAN'T WAIT to plant a fish heads!!?? It is weird, but I'll give it a go.

[yvonne ellefson]

Last year I followed your advice in general...except no fish heads, no aspirin, and no eggshells. My Church variety of tomatoes had lots of blossom end rot. This year I planned ahead better and got almost everything right (except hoping I didn't plant too early this past weekend.)

I was a little surprised when one of the fish heads that came in by way of a friend's fisherman source was a large yellowtail tuna! I also snagged some small rockfish (body, tail, no head) from a friend who had freezer defrosting issues. Not all plants received the fish-goodness but it will be interesting to see what happens this year. I am also far better prepared having taken your Tomato Masters course, where I realized (after my garden had already been planted) that I completely reversed everything in terms of which plants should be in the higher and lower sun locations. Trying to improve each year!

[Karen]

I will now be stalking my local fishmongers for fish heads!! Who knew?

I am assuming any fish will do?
Thanks for awesome information.

Karen

[amy]

One of my local restaurants gave me fish heads and I am so excited to plant my tomatoes like you do above. I am hoping they will break the 10 ft mark this year! Thanks!!