On 5/8/10 9:44 AM, EVP MAN wrote:

Tomato plants with ten foot roots Why I'd have to hire a backhoe to
dig them out in the fall. Then I'd have a big enough hole to put an
inground swimming pool in the following spring........LOL Last year I
did plant 14 Jet Star tomato plants in the ground and I must say that
they produced a bumper crop for me to enjoy. When I pulled them up in
the fall, the roots were much closer to ten inches rather than ten feet
long It would be quite hard to double dig a garden with such a huge
root system. I pruned each of my plants to a single stem and used
stakes. Each plant averaged between 30-35 nice tomatoes.

Rich


Because tomatoes are not woody plants, the roots are not woody. When
you pulled out tomato plants and saw 10-inch roots, you left most of the
roots in the ground. Once the plants are removed or die, the deep roots
quickly rot away.

Nevertheless, tomatoes need a lot of space for their roots while growing.

--
David E. Ross
Climate: California Mediterranean
Sunset Zone: 21 -- interior Santa Monica Mountains with some ocean
influence (USDA 10a, very close to Sunset Zone 19)
Gardening diary at http://www.rossde.com/garden/diary