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Old March 27, 2018   #4
carolyn137
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Upstate NY, zone 4b/5a
Posts: 21,169
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I learned a little trick from my commercial farmer friend Charlie.

Take off all of the side branches leaving just a tuft of foliage at the top and if already hardened off,keep them out of the rain.

Taking off the side branches lowers the level of photosynthesis which makes the energy compounds that allows for further growth.Keeping them out of the rain also makes them grow slower.

Then plant them deeply, for both Charlie and myself that would have been inground but should work with large containers as well.

If they get too tall to even do that make a trench with a hoe about 3 ft deep and lay the plant in it horizontally,leaving just a tuft of foliage sticking out and at first that tuft will also be horizontal but with sunshine it will start to grow vertically.

There were many times when I couldn't set out plants b/c of weather and I'm so very glad that Charlie taught me what he did.

For those of you who might have the book I was asked to write about tomatoes,you'll see in the thank you section that I thanked him for a lot but didn't specify anything. But what else he did was to turn under the field I had when Frost hit, disc it , then sow winter rye,then in the Spring he'd comeback and plow it in deeply and then level it off,then go down the rows with his small tractor and put the guide bars out to mark where the rows were and there was 5 ft between rows.

Fact is, Charlie didn't even like tomatoes but grew many many acres of them and delivered them to places where plants were sold as well as fruits that his workers harvested during the later part of the summer season.

Carolyn
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