How to plant your leggy tomatoes

Hey there, garden friend.

We had about a hundred visitors walk through Bethany Farm for the Loudoun Spring Farm Tour two weekends ago, and even a few who drove all the way from Pennsylvania!

If you were among our guests, Reader, it was so good to have met you in-person. And we hope you walked away raring to grow something good for you and/or your family.

The tomatoes are not quite in the ground. (We're still recovering from farm tour)
The eggplants are settling while flea beetles threaten to attack.
But the potatoes have grown beautifully leafy in every spot the deer can't reach.

A new fence is almost built, which means more beds, more growing, and more food.

And check out the berries coming in.

Standing in the middle of all of it last weekend, watching families discover what a real permaculture garden looks like up close, and what that might mean for their own lives, it was a good reminder of why we keep showing up. ❤️

🍅 Tomato Tip

This week I want to share something we covered in our recent Solanaceae webinar that changed how we transplant our leggy tomatoes.

Most people dig a round hole and drop the tomato in upright.

But tomatoes grow roots all along their stems when buried — so the more stem you bury, the stronger the root system.

We call this trench planting. Instead of a round hole, you dig a trench lengthwise, lay the tomato on its side, and bury the entire stem — even if it's leggy, even if it already has fruit on it. Just leave the top few inches pointing up.

The plant roots along the whole length. It anchors deeper. It reaches water further down. It handles summer heat better than anything planted upright ever will.

We learned this the hard way after a few summers of watching our tomatoes struggle in July. Now it's the first thing we do if we have leggy tomatoes.

Speaking of the Solanaceae family...

Dave and I wrote a guide on
🍅 tomatoes, 🌶️ peppers, 🥔 potatoes and 🍆 eggplants,
called How to Grow Solanaceas Successfully.