How To Plant A Tomato Plant
People ask me how I get 5-foot tomato plants loaded with fruit. I use my dad’s method. The secret ingredient? Cow manure. Tomatoes like a lot of fertilizer, so I mix the cow manure with the dirt and use that to fill in the hole. It works great. Here’s more:
How To Plant A Tomato:
You will need:
- A tomato plant
Well-prepared soil
A bag of cow manure
Shovel
Watering can
Directions:
Step 1: Buy your tomato plant or grow it from seed. Prepare your soil for planting.
Step 2: Dig a deep hole with a shovel, at least the full length of the head of the shovel.
Step 3: Mix the dirt from the hole with cow manure. Take about one-third of the bag of manure and stir it into the dirt until it is about 50 dirt/50 manure. It is important to mix the manure since it would be too hard on the plant to just put manure in the hole. Adding the dirt cuts the heat of the manure and still gives the plant plenty of fetilizer.
Step 4: Prepare the plant by pulling off all the leaves except for the top bush of the tomato. So it will go from this:
To this:
I will put most of the tomato plant underground with only the top poking out. Why? All the stem you see there will grow roots, which will give the plant twice the roots it already has. That leads to a stronger, healthier plant that produces a lot of tomatoes.
Step 5: Plant the tomato plant. Remove it from the pot. Put a little bit of the dirt/manure mixture in the bottom of the hole and sit the tomato plant on top. Fill in the hole using the manure mixture. At the top, pack plain dirt around the plant. Make a little mound and a ditch around it for water to collect, like so:
Step 6: Thoroughly water the plant. Keep adding water until the ground saturates and the little ditch around the plant fills with a puddle of water. Voila, you’re done.
It’s important to note that this method is just for tomato plants. Many plants can’t handle the heat of the cow manure and still other plants won’t root if you strip their leaves off. But with tomatoes, I find it works like a charm.
What are your tomato planting secrets?
