How to Plant a Raised Tomato Bed

Patti: Hi, I'm Patti Moreno the garden girl.

William: And I'm William Moss. Today, we’re going to talk about planting tomatoes.

Patti: I love growing tomatoes. Every single year, I grow something like 25 different varieties. I know, I'm obsessed with tomatoes and I grow heirloom tomatoes. They just so much better and that’s why I'm growing tomatoes for, for the taste.

William: Now regardless of what tomato you plant, you want to give them the best possible chance with proper planting. Tomatoes are the exception to the rule. Most plants what to be planted in the same level they are in the pot, not these guys.

Patti: When we plant them deeply, what’s going to happen is roots are going to grow out of the stem. That’s going to give us a really good root up. It's going to give us a lot of roots that are going to be able to bring lots of water and nutrients to those tomatoes.

William: So, typically, you know the hole would only be for this about maybe four or five inches but you can see, this hole is pretty deep. So, I'm going to take them out and I want to place it way down in the bottom of this hole. Once again, this is a no-no for almost every other plant. But it's perfectly fine and it’ll do great there. Now, we’ll just add a little compost to it, stuff through the hole in.

Patti: I grow huge tomatoes every single year. They’re going to be 12-feet tall. I think that because of the compost that I add.

William: Compost is great to add to tomatoes because it has calcium in it. Tomatoes need that calcium. It helps prevent blossom-end rot which is where the tomato gets that dark brown spot on the end and becomes unusable. So, we don’t want that.

Patti: But we also have other things in here already. We’ve got some marigolds. Marigolds are great companion plants to tomatoes. That insect repellent is in the roots of the plant. We also have some basil here were going to companion plant with our tomatoes. Any kind of fragrant herb will work. So, I'm planting basil but you can use parsley, you can use oregano. We planted our first tomato plant.

William: I thought you're going to plant this one—I mean, this is when you start to say hi in the world, you know I'm not going to dig a hole just three feet. The plant will die. So, how do people approach this? And we got a good idea for that Patti.

Patti: We do and we are going to use the trenching method to plant this tomato plant. We’ve already dug a trench here.

William: We’re going to place this tomato over in the trench. So, I'm just going to pop-up the pot, another one of your tasty heirlooms that you like.

Patti: Yes, I love it.

William: I'm going to put them down in here and we’re going to lay the plants into the trench. Everything that’s going to be under the ground needs to be bare stems. So, we just pop all these leaves off and so I’ll hold it right here and let you fill in around the base in there.

This is how we turn a lengthy three foot tomato into a style eight-edge tomato.

Patti: So, let’s keep planting. We’ve got a hole already here. We’ve got one more tomato plant in there.

William: We’re going to trench for him, he’s long.

Patti: Look at this size.

William: Oh, that’s good for a vase right there.

Patti: Oh my God.

William: That’s vase—we’re going to put it back in the garden though, let it keep doing its job. Tomatoes are surprisingly drought tolerant as you know Patti. They’re surprisingly drought tolerant but when they’re first getting established, you want to make sure you give the water they need. So, give them a lot of water in the beginning. Let them evolve that healthy root system and you'll be fine.

So the main thing to remember about plating tomatoes is one, you want to plant them deep. Two, you want to make sure you get some good compost down in there especially something with calcium in it and then three, water, water, water in the beginning. All those things are going to help you establish a nice healthy root system on your tomato which is going to payoff with tomatoes for you all summer long.

Patti: Thank you so much William for plating my tomato bed here with me. I'm going to take care of it. I'm going to maintain it and grow some tasty tomatoes.

William: I want to stop by for some great salsa.

Patti: Absolutely! I can't wait. I'm Patti Moreno the garden girl.

William: And I'm william Moss.

Patti: Thanks for watching.