Planting Tomatoes

With Guy Esposito MD

Tomatoes, in my opinion, are the main reason to have a vegetable garden. There is a tremendous number of tomatoes plants that you can enjoy and you will want to have a variety. You can grow cherry types, mid-season types, and even something called an heirloom tomato. An heirloom is generally considered to be a variety that has been passed down, through several generations of a family because of it's valued characteristics. Heirloom varieties have become popular in the past few years and the term is being used somewhat loosely. Commercial Heirlooms are usually open-pollinated varieties introduced before 1940, or other tomato varieties that are more than 50 years in circulation.

Brandywine is a delicious tomato with a large leaf like a potato plant. It is not as disease resistant but is worth trying in a small home garden because it has excellent flavor. It is one of the tomato varieties responsible for the ascendance of the popularity of heirloom varieties.

Ingredients

What To Look For When Buying Tomato Plants

When you go to a nursery and buy tomato plants there are a few things that you want to look for. Tomato plant stems are very tender and you want to try and find plants that were “hardened off,” in other words have spent some time outside in the weather. Next, look at the leaves and be sure that they are not getting yellowish. If leaves are yellowish it means that the plant has not been fed well and has a lack of nitrogen. Plants like this could use some fertilizer but that will delay it growing into a healthy plant. Also, look at the leaves very closely and avoid leaves that have tiny holes and insects, which of course means that some insect has been eating them.

Next you want to hold up the plant by the pot and carefully slide out the root ball to see what kind of a root system it has. If it has a compacted root system where the roots are white, this means that it is ready to plant and has a good running start to grow into a sound, healthy tomato plant.

Digging The Hole

Many people do not realize this but you want to bury the plant as deep as possible. The way that I do this is to remove the first set of leaves at the bottom of the plant and bury the stem all the way up towards the next set of leaves. This allows for more roots to grow from the stem area, which is what they want to do. If you wait to plant you will see these roots already coming out of the bottom of the stem area. Remember the more roots a plant has the better to gather nutrients, moisture and be more stable.

In most cases the best way to dig a hole is with a standard garden trowel, one of the essential tools for any home gardener. I use a bulb planter, which makes it a little easier and quicker, but that is mostly because I plant about 60 tomato plants every year. (Many of my friends and family think I am crazy but they are always there with their baskets for ripe, homegrown tomatoes in August.)

After digging the hole about the depth of the trowel, I also place a small amount (about 1 tablespoon) of slow release fertilizer at the bottom of the hole. This will nourish the plant over a 3-month period. In addition, I like to put a smaller amount in the dirt that I am going to put back around the plant.

Securing the Plant

Once the hole is ready, simply place the root ball in the center of the hole and dump the soil into the hole around the whole plant. The most important thing of all is to press the soil firmly around the plant to be sure that the plant and its’ roots are in total contact with the soil.

After planting be sure to water the plant thoroughly. This includes the leaves as well as the soil. You can add a liquid fertilizer solution to the water as well.

Cut Worm Damage

I planted a whole row of Sweet 100 Cherry tomatoes a week ago and there are two empty holes because the plants died. Upon close examination I found that the roots had been cut at their base, meaning that it was cut worms. This happens every year so I always keep a couple of plants in reserve to fill in the spots where others have been severely damaged like this.

There is a simple trick you can use to protect against cutworms, called a cutworm control collar. When planting, take a Styrofoam cup, cut it in half, and place the tomato root ball through the top half of the cup so that the cup forms a protective ring around the base of the stem. The cutworms will not be able to burrow into the stem and for some reason are unable to go over the collar, therefore they will be completely protected from this garden menace.

Instructions

Guy Esposito is an orthopedic surgeon whose other passion is vegetable gardening. From his early medical school days until the present, he has been growing a variety of vegetables in his home garden. He is the head gardener for the PBS series Ciao Italia (www.ciaoitalia.com)  which for the past twenty-one years has featured  in each season several episodes based on his garden. His garden has also been featured in print in Yankee Magazine and Northeast Flavors. He has given public seminars on the health benefits of a lifestyle based on home-grown vegetables. When not attending to his duties as Chief of Surgery of the Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, New Hampshire, he can always be found in his garden.