Step 1: When you’re at the nursery, always choose the shortest and most stocky young plant you can find. The short stocky, thick stemmed seedlings are grown with care under very close proximity UV lighting. The short thick young
Step 1: When you’re at the nursery, always choose the shortest and most stocky young plant you can find. The short stocky, thick stemmed seedlings are grown with care under very close proximity UV lighting. The short thick young plants show that the little sprouts didn’t have to reach for the light as they were spouting and beginning to grow.
Photo Credit: Sunnyvalegarden.com
If the young tomato stalk you’re looking at is lanky and thin or even floppy, this is not a good choice and means that the light was too dim or too far away from the spouts to cause them to grow properly.
Not enough light. The tomato sprouts in the image to the left are growing with insufficient light. This is what is causing them to lean over and reach for the light and be very spindly.
Sometimes it’s possible to make a lanky sprout strengthen and thicken up but it isn’t the prime choice if the option to buy a stocky one is there.
Choose the darkest green foliage of what’s available as well. Important note: Yellowing leaves indicate a lack of nutrients, lack of light or other stresses on the seedling.
Step 2: Prepare the planting spot. Dig out a hole that’s about 3 shovels worth of soil. Dig a larger hole if the tomato plant root ball you have is larger than that though. Make the hole about triple the size of the root ball on the seedling. Fill the hole nearly to the top with good quality soil mix.
Did you know that a tomato is a fruit?
Step 3: Plant the tomato very deeply. Much deeper than what might seem right. Plant it up to right under the second set of leaves, then press the soil firmly around the stalk. The first set of leaves are called the Cotyledon leaves and they look like this to the right:
The cool thing about a tomato plant is that it will grow roots from the entire stalk that is submerged underground. This ability creates many layers of extra roots to develop. These additional roots help to stabilize the adult plant as well as increase the plant’s ability to absorb nutrients from the soil.
Step 4: Water with good clean water, use rain water if you have it, otherwise the hose water is fine.
Step 4.5: If you really want to super charge your tomato babies, water them with water that has been infused with compost (this is called Com