When you start your own tomato plants indoors, they tend to be a bit wimpy: tall and thin with few lower leaves. You may even feel ashamed about planting them in your vegetable garden lest your neighbors laugh at you!
Well, they won’t laugh if you apply the following trick:
Instead of planting scrawny tomato plants upright, dig a lengthwise hole and place them on their side, bending the top part upward so it remains exposed. Then just cover the bare stem with soil. The plant will instantly look perfectly sound … and roots will grow on the buried part, giving you an even more vigorous plant that you would have had it were it planted upright. So your scrawny homegrown tomato plant may well outdo the sturdy-looking but much more expensive store-bought one!
Warning: do not plant grafted tomatoes this way. Whether you buy them or grow your own, with these especially vigorous tomatoes, the graft union must always be above the ground. If you bury the graft point, the scion (top part) will take root and benefits of grafting (greater vigor, productivity and disease resistance) will be lost.
Adapted from an article originally published on June 3, 2015.
