I need to admit a gardening opportunity I discovered this year while planting my tomatoes. Notice, I am not calling it a failure, but an opportunity. Failing would be if I didn’t try. You can read a little more about my garden space here. You see, in the spring, I am usually traveling a lot for work. When you have a garden, spring is a difficult time to travel because it is the start of garden season. I am often providing seedling care instructions to my family from wherever I am in the country. When things go awry, I understand that is the breaks of traveling for work.
The Opportunity
This year, however, I did not have very many work trips so I really should have had an amazing seedling season. But, that would not be the case. You see, every February, I am just over it. I am over the winter, I am over the bitter cold, and I am over the bone chilling wind. I get too excited for spring and next thing I know, I plant my seeds.
I do look up the appropriate planting window. I even checked my garden planner and waited a whole week later than the 2024 season. I should have waited longer. My tomatoes grew fast and started out looking beautiful. But, then I passed a tipping point where their growth was not sustainable in pots, on my kitchen table. You see, the weather this spring was wet. In my area, we had over 9 inches of rain. The persistent cold was also a factor. Most days this month, it was an average of 15 degrees colder than previous years. Not a good recipe for healthy tomato plants nor to be able to plant outside. So, I had to hold them in the house a little longer than I should have. That is when they became leggy and much too flexible.
Tomato Superpowers
But here is the great thing about tomatoes, they can be so forgiving. You see those tiny hair-like structures on the stem in the image below? Those are called trichomes. They help protect the plants from stressors in a multitude of ways. A soil scientist named Ashley does a great job explaining a little more about these in her blog called Gardening in Canada. You can read the detailed information here. What I hope you can see also on the stem are those tiny, white bumps. Those are called adventitious roots. Ashley also does a great job explaining what their function is.
Why are these important to me and my tomato plants? Well, because I ended up with a slew of very tall tomato plants with tiny root balls. These adventitious roots will help me grow a strong tomato and recover my gardening confidence.
How to Plant Leggy Tomatoes
So, how to I compensate for leggy, weak tomato plants? If I were to plant these vertical, like a normal, healthy plant, they would flop over. Or, I would have to plant them so deep it would be impossible in my raised beds. I can only go so deep before I hit ledge and that is not a good environment for strong plants. Therefore, I plant them horizontally. That way, all of those little adventitious roots, will develop. Planting horizontally, will add stability so they can develop, and the numerous roots will help contribute to the health of the plant. More roots means more nutrients the plant can absorb.
Tomato Success
My tomato plants have now been planted for 3 weeks and the weather still has not been the most cooperative. It continues to rain a lot and average temps continue to be below normal. With that being said, my tomatoes are looking terrific. Most of their growth has been in the area of root development and that makes me happy. I just recently trimmed any branches touching the ground. With so much rain, I am trying to maintain an aggressive fertilizing schedule. Rain washes the nutrients right through the soil. When you start to see yellowing on the leaves, that means the plants are lacking these important nutrients. I have been trying to avoid that using a combination of slow release fertilizers and liquid fertilizers.
Once I have more growth on these tomatoes, I plan to trellis using my new garden tool. Check out my video below and I also have it linked in the widget above.
As you can see, this spring was a great opportunity to turn a negative to a positive. Tomatoes are terrific as they are pretty forgiving when you are not very attentive (or over exuberant like me). They also can grow in a variety of spaces whether in the ground or on a patio in a pot. I took advantage of tomatoes inherent properties to recover from a few missteps in my planting timeline. For the record, I will will writing this in my garden journal and I promise myself not to start too early next year.