After some closer inspections of the root growth, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s not much difference in planting a tomato 6 inches deep, or 16 inch…
Question by Tess: What does it mean when new tomato plants start getting little white spots on their leaves?
I just bought tomato plants last week at a nursery and need to transplant them. They’re looking healthy and strong but I haven’t been able to get out and transplant them yet as there still workers doing post-hurricane repairs around my house and yard. What do I do for these plants if anything beyond transplanting them, and how big a pot can I put them in?
Best answer:
Answer by Tedrick
That means bugs and peasts ate eating off them. Its hard to grow your own food and keep bugs off the plants. But I have a simple solution to your proble,. If you dont want to go buy bug spray, and they can be pretty high, all you have to do is get a spray bottle. Put some warm water in it and add some dish liquid. You can also add the liquid hand soaps and Dish washer deturgent. Mix it up till it get all bubbly and soapy water. Go to you plants and spray down the leaves and your tomatoes. This puts a soapy coating on the entire plant and bugs dont like it. Just do not pur the water on the plant, just the leaves and fruit.
This is also good on garden plants as well as any other.
Hope you get a good garden!
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Did you check the roots that were trenched?
Hey Bob, Great videos. Thank you. I think, your plants are getting roots wherever there are leaf nodes buried in soil in addition to the primary root system. As ‘christschool’ suggested earlier, try scoring/wounding the stem in between the nodes buried in soil and probably it would encourage the plants to grow roots all along the stem. Worth trying on a couple of plants to see what happens! Cheers!
Try scoring the stem and repeat this experiment this year.
I like chickens eddie
Your root growth may reflect how deeply you are watering the plants. The roots will remain shallow if the irrigation is not going so deep.
Way back in the 70’s I watched a show on PBS called the Victory Garden. That is where I first learned the trick of deep planting Tomato plants. I know that some people have the mistaken belief it was for additional root growth and thus healthier larger crops etc… But If my memory serves me correctly, back then the idea was for a larger stem for plant support. Obviously a larger main stem would mean the plant would be more capable of carrying a heavier harvest !
I have seen your previous video on this, and all I can tell is that watering them suckers really slow and deep, does in fact produce roots all throughout the stem that is underground. I pinged a few others who have said the same thing, but I still like the idea of laying them on their sides, and getting the growing tips to turn upwards.
I did record a followup, but the audio was blank. The mic wasn’t plugged in all the way. Because I had to wait for the first cluster of tomatoes to develop and ripen, there wasn’t much time for the roots to grow in the section where I pulled the bag up. If I had removed the first cluster earlier, I could have pulled the bags up sooner and they might have had a better chance at growing more roots.
hi, thanks for the videos. They’re fascinating. Did you ever do a follow upo on this video? So curious about whether the double bag tomatoes had roots all the way up the stem. Would love to know what happened.
i had some in a 5 gallon bucket, the roots filled the bucket completely. i even drilled extra holes in the bottom and the roots grew into the ground below it. so, sorry this video is not always true. i had to water twice per day.
Nothing special. Just a mix of natural soil, potting soil and compost, and a few amendments.
what type of soil do you use, it looks so powdery and dusty??? special soil for tomatoes?
I like your potato mounding idea to grow more roots.
Interesting. I like lifting the bag method by the looks of it. i will tune in later to see what happened.
Kevin
Hydroponic stores online. Just about all of them carry growbags. If you have a local hydro store where you can pick them up, they’ll be cheaper cuz you don’t have to pay shipping.
were do you get your grow bags
I never could bring myself to bury 3/4 of the plant like the Bonnie Tomato plant instructions say to do. I always go deeper than they were originally or course, and maybe prune the bottom leaves depending on the plant but 3/4 of the plant never made sense to me and yeah, build up the soil around the plant as they grow and replace the mulch to keep that soil in good shape, conserve on water and keep that dirt from splashing up etc… BUT, I did not know all of this. Very scientific bro! Thanks.
I just dug up some of the plants that were finished. Yes, they do grow roots down the rest of the stem. However, the bulk of the roots were still clustered right near the base of the plant.
If you plant tomatoes on their side do you still get a gap between the top layer of the roots and the tap root or does it all fill in since it’s withing the top couple of inches? Thanks and God bless
Thanks for the kind words. Those plants have been topped and are finishing up now. In a few weeks I’ll go thru those bags and see just what kind of root growth there really was.
That’s just sad. Some people are idiots.
I had a youth group from a local church visit me in June 2 yrs. About 12 people the first week…poured my heart out to them. Let them pick eveything I had in the garden. The next week, it was 30+ folks with parents. Same deal, taught as best I could, offered encouragement, offered to teach anybody who wanted to come by. They picked the gardens clean…and nobody ever came back. Basically, they all got a free trip to the farmers market. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed.
Do you ever have school children visiting? If you get them interested while they are young it will stick with them for life. Seems like you are a good teacher and you would like having them visit. Most of them have probably never been to a farm or green house. Not certain where you live.
Sounds like good advice to me. These have done pretty well. And I recently planted some outside the same way. I might just make a habit of it.
Did any body ever bother to ask what the tomato plant wants ? well I did and she told me she don’t like to grow straight up in the air and that she is a ground vine and parts of her vine likes to make contact with the soil to put in roots where she wants she says she would just love a big mound of compost and to be just left alone to travel where she wants.
sounds like bacterial wilt. it is heard if not in possible to get rid of. i am sorry but if they are all affected you should start over. sterilize every thing so you don’t spread it to the new plants. there’s a chance that it is just the environment. go to a store and buy medium pots and try that.