Telow,

Congratulations on raising a fine crop of tomato plants!

I would say it depends on how well your soil drains and also on how cold your soil is.

If your soil has a high clay content and drains more slowly, I'd dig a trench and lay them sideways. That's what I normally do.

If your soil is more of a sandy soil or a sandy loam and is well-draining, then you could plant deep.

Now, if your soil is very cold (below about 55 degrees), you'd be better off planting sideways.

Or, in the interest of science, you could plant half of them sideways and the other half deep and see which ones perform best.

Don't know your soil temperature? Assuming you're in OK, check out the link below. Just click on it and it will bring up one of the soil temperature maps.

The temperature readings on the map are from the OK Mesonet stations in each county and may not match your own soil temperature exactly, but should be close.

Last week, soil temperatures were much higher, but the cold, cloudy, rainy weather has dropped them back down to the more typical soil temps we have at this time of year. Last week my soil temps were over 70 degrees and I wanted to plant in the worst possible way, but I didn't. Now they're in the mid-50s. However, as soon as the weather warms up again, the soil temps will go up pretty fast too.

Good luck with your plantings. I hope to start planting tomatoes tomorrow or the next day if my 10-day forecast looks good. It was 34 degrees here early this morning, so I'm glad I didn't have any tomato plants out in the ground yet.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Temp Map At 4

Dawn what is a good minimum soil temperature for tomatoes?

Dawn, I too would like to know a good soil temp. for tomatoes plus, where do you find a 10 day weather forecast you have mentioned. All I get is the 7 day forecast on TV.

I would like to know a bit more about planting sideways. is it as simple as it sounds? Lay on side and allow the top foot or so "bend" vertical.

mike

I like this web site, but you will have to enter your town. The neatest thing is the historic averages weather. Click on the tiny blue historic average. Click on a month and it gives you the average, highest and lowest for each date. It lets you see when it is pretty safe to plant but there are odd years that break all records.

Here is a link that might be useful: intellicast weather site

Helen,

I think 55 degrees is about the coldest soil temp that tomatoes will tolerate and yet continue growing, so I try to plant when the soil temp is between 55 and 60 and the nights are staying above 45 degrees. Exposing plants to colder soil or to colder low temperatures just causes them to stall and stop growing.

Telow, For the 10-day forecast, I look at several websites, including the Intellicast site Helen linked above, and Accuweather, which I'll link below. I also listen carefully to my local TV forecast and compare it to the NWS point forecast for the location closest to me as well as the websites I mentioned. The various sources never agree exactly, so I just look at them and look at the weather we're having, and try to "guesstimate" which forecast seems most plausible.

Mike, Just dig a trench instead of a deep hole. Remove the leaves from the part of the plant stem that will be below ground. Place the plant sideways in the trench, cover the stem with soil, pat it down and water well. If the soil sinks in a bit, add more until it is level with the surrounding grade. I usually leave about 6-8" of plant above the ground. You can use a rock, a twig, a popsicle stick or mulch to prop up the above ground portion if you want. I generally just leave it alone because in a day or so it will begin to straighten up and reach for the sun on its own. Roots will form all along the buried stem. We use trench planting to increase potential rooting. A deeply planted stem also will root all along the stem, but you run the risk that a prolonged wet spell will keep the deep roots too wet.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Accuweather Forecast Page

I use Intellicast for the forecast, but I use Oklahoma Mesonet for the average frost dates.

After you click on the link below:

Click on 'CLIMATE' just above the map.
On the left chose: 'NORMALS AND EXTREMES'
Then chose 'First/Last Freeze Days'
Then 'Last Freeze Spring' (I use 70% to be safe, then look at the 10 day map to see if it looks safe this year).

Here is a link that might be useful: Mesonet

Hey Dawn, we did it again. I just walked in the door and sat down and answered the message. So we were typing at the same time again. Great minds think alike. HaHa

about 6 or 8 years ago I tried an experiment, I normally plant by laying the plant in a trench, but this one year I planted some tomatoes very deep and some the normal way in the trench. The next fall I dug a ditch along the experimental plants. The plants in the trench had roots along the stem and did better through the growing season.
The plants I planted with the post hole diggers had the original root ball at the bottom of the hole and not many roots off the stem till about 5" below the soil surface.

The plants were planted from a 1 gal. pot. the plants were started on Jan. 25Th and were quite large by planting time.
It is harder to plant a large plant in a trench. For one thing you have to have a deeper hole to cover the root ball and make a longer ditch to lay the plant in because the lower part of the plant wont bend without breaking.

Where I live now I don't have a choice because my soil is too shallow. I will take a few plants and strip all the limbs off except 2 or 3 inches on the top, and just turn that small top up and press soil against it. It seems that the plants I plant normally will produce sooner, but the ones I plant in the trench will produce longer and have a larger root system.

I have tried to develop a habit of laying the plant from left to right so I will not drive a stake into the ground and cut the stem off.

This may be crazy, but it seems to work for me.

Larry

I never planted deep after that.

Carol,

It happens so often it is spooky, but hey, we're sisters so of course we think alike. What is odd, though, is not only are we thinking the same thing but we're thinking it at the same time.

Larry,

It doesn't sound crazy to me. That's a great point about the stake too.

I pound the stake into the ground before I plant them so that I don't accidentally break them off by pounding a stake right through them.

Dawn

Thanks Dawn

next ten days looks pretty good. I hope the soil warms up a bit. Ill probably have to transplant my tomatoes one more time. They are about 2 feet tall in 4" pots. At the rate they are growing now by mid april theyll need stakes already. Ill know better next year to not start them in january. Im growing some for my mom and she is going to be thrilled to start off with 3 foot tall tomatoes in april.
Ive been pinching off blossoms everyday.

mike

You're welcome Mike.

I am as far south in OK as you can go and still be in the Sooner State, with Texas being to my west, south and east, and even as far south as I am, I normally start tomato and pepper seeds on Super Bowl Sunday. My average last frost date is March 28th so that's when I want my plants to be ready to be transplanted, but we have had a frost after that for at least the last 5 consecutive years. We've had frost here along the river in May for the last three years. I still try to put my tomato plants in the ground in early April, but I have to be prepared to cover them up on a random night here or there until after the first week in May. I'm sure it is our low-lying location near the Red River that causes the very late frosts because friends of mine on higher ground just a mile or two from us don't get the May frosts.

I think you could start your plants somewhere between mid-Feb. and early March and they'd be plenty big at planting time. Starting with larger transplants will give you earlier tomatoes as long as they don't get rootbound before being transplanted out.

If it is any consolation, I've been pinching off blossoms too, and I'm having to water my plants twice a day because the plants now are really too large for the cups they're in and they're drying out quickly.

I hope to start transplanting in a day or two if the weather allows.

Dawn