dps wrote:


The best way to choose tomato plants at a garden center is to look for
good color and no wilting and the thickest stems, not the tallest
plants. Tall skinny tomato plants have probably been crowded together in
their growing area. They will recover once set out, but it will take
them a bit more time to bear fruit (possibly a week or two depending on
how crowded they were).

Allow me to offer a contrary thought. When shopping for tomato plants I
specifically look for the spindly ones about to be thrown away.

I do this because I intend to plant extra deep, allowing roots to form over
the entire buried length. No matter how tall my plants are the day I buy
them, they are about 2 leaves tall the day I plant them. By planting extra
deep, roots form along the entire length of the buried vine. This gives the
plant a large quantity of roots buried deeply enough to ride out all but
the worst of droughts. With such deep roots and so many of them, the
'buried to their necks' plants take off on a growth spurt and soon catch up
and surpass their taller cousins.

I used to use a posthole digger to make the hole to plant them but one of
those 3" diameter soil augers sold for use with electric drill motors works
just fine for me in my current beds. It is also possible to simply lay them
horizontally in a shallower hole but that gives you only half the
advantage. You get a lot of roots, but none of them are particularly deep.

YMMV but this is what I have found to work for me.

Bill