Blog reader Ray sent these photos of his weeping peach, weeping crabapple, and a Hydrangea paniculata, along with this comment:
“When a tomato grower extrapolates his applied knowledge to his landscape, before learning otherwise.”
(Translation for those tomato avoiders like me: they are all planted too deeply, which tomatoes like. Trees and shrubs, not so much.)
Just an FYI, this blog’s images don’t show up in google chrome.
Michael, I’m on Chrome right now and the photos are there. Not sure why you aren’t seeing them.
I have also been having issues with the images loading on Chrome. The page constantly loads and Chrome says that it is waiting for your server.
I’m also using Chrome and not having any problems. The page is always slow to load, in Chrome or IE, but if I hit the icon twice(it’s on my favorites bar) it loads quickly. Re the pictures, I hope the owner of those trees can dig them up and fix the problem. They’re all beautiful plants. But if it looks like a pencil stuck in the ground (or fence post or telephone pole) it’s not planted properly.
Do tomatoes really like to be planted deeply? Is there any research on that?
I thought it was a trick to keep leggy seedlings from falling over.
I agree he should dig them up early this spring and replant and correct height. I always plant my tomatoes deep-esp the indeterminate heirloom types I grow-they get over 5 feet tall!
Michael, Thad and other Chrome users, our IT person’s advice is “don’t use Chrome.”
Sorry, that’s about all I can tell you.
I’ve grown tomatoes successfully without planting them deep. I think tomatoes merely tolerate deep planting, but don’t require it, much like aquatic trees tolerate flooding but don’t require it. With normal trees and shrubs of course, burying the root collar is just bad, but if you’re lucky they MAY tolerate it.
Unlike most plants tomatoes will grow proper roots along the stem if planted deep.
If you don’t stake or cage your tomatoes, they will sprawl all over the place. They will also put down roots everywhere the stems touch the ground. The unscientific thinking is that the bigger the root system, the better the plant will do. When I was a kid growing up in tomato farming country, all the farmers planted them deep so they would develop that larger root system. I still do it. (See what you started, Linda?)
Plants and trees ar
e kind of like relationships some baseball players have with their coaches. Some require some deep rooting while others do just fine with just a surface type relationship. Either way they both can perform just fine.