Planting tomatoes

Dig the holes for tomatoes about five feet apart. Don't look at the little plants now and decide your spacing, think of the size they will be in August when they are big and bushy. If you don't fit between the plants you can't pick the fruit.

Put in a scoop of rabbit poo or other fertilizer. My dad always put fish guts in each hole. All year whenever he caught fish, he would wrap the guts up in newspaper and put them in the freezer. In each hole also goes a half gallon of water so that there is good source of moisture at the roots to help the tomato get established after the shock of replanting.

Grandma and Grandpa blessed with us some great tomatoes that they have been tending to for the last couple of months. They brought them up from Arkansas where the growing season starts way before ours. This is what a tomato in late June might look like here.

Gently, ever so gently, slide the plant out of the pot supporting the root base so that it doesn't fall apart and none of the branches break.

Fill the hole in around the plant with dirt. Any part of the plant that is buried will sent out roots, so planting them up to the first set of leaves or higher gives it a nice strong base.

Put a tomato cage around the the plant to keep it off the ground as it grows. As it gets taller, keep tucking the limbs inside the cage. Our cages are made out of woven cattle wire. The other goal of the cages is to make it harder for the ducks and chickens to get to the plants and prohibit them from digging up them up.

Now we will put mulch, we use grass clippings, around each one to help hold the moisture in the soil during the heat of the summer and to keep the weeds at bay.