This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Have another exciting episode for you today.
So, what I'm going to show you today is how to set up and plant out your raised bed garden
with tomatoes.
So, you can see here, we have a raised bed that was the broccoli bed.
We finally got it cleared out.
I layered on some new compost and rock dust on top and it's actually rained a lot so it's
actually leveled it out.
Actually looks nice and pretty, but now what we're going to do is we're going to plant
some tomatoes.
So, what I like to use is called the square foot gardening method.
Also, another form of it is actually called biointensive, which promotes similar planting
spaces like packing plants close together so that you could basically achieve the highest
amount of yields and wasting the least amount of space.
Now, that it particularly important in a situation like this.
I'm literally in my front year and a standard residential housing tract and I don't have
a lot of space and acreage to plant, you know, a lot of plants, so I really go to plant a
high density and smaller number of plants because I just didn't have the room.
So, the square foot gardening method, they basically have a couple different specifications.
So, one specification is for like smaller tomatoes, maybe the determinate tomatoes,
and once again I'll go ahead and go over determinate and indeterminate tomatoes if you don't know
what that means.
Basically determinate tomatoes grow to a certain size, generally they're small or they don't
just vine out and grow like humungous, and they put on one large crop and once that large
crop comes on and is put on, then it pretty much doesn't produce anymore.
So, that, once again, is determinate.
It has a determined lifespan, whereas the indeterminate, basically you could plant them,
they'll grow, they'll pump out tomatoes, they'll keep growing, they'll grow as a vine, they'll
keep growing probably down your street if you let them if your season is long enough
like in the tropics where it doesn't freeze and they continue to put out tomatoes and
tomatoes and tomatoes and tomatoes and tomatoes and tomatoes until, I don't know, I don't
know until what happens, until it got tired, until it wanted to take a nap, but indeterminates
just keep going basically for most cases and in most cases like for me, until it gets too
cold, until it freezes, and it just doesn't make it anymore.
So, for the determinate tomatoes, they basically recommend one foot spacing.
So, basically planting each stem of each tomato approximately one foot apart.
That's 12 inches.
So, I've a tape measure.
Sometimes I'll also use a yardstick or just a ruler to space out my plants accordingly.
Now, once again that is if you're going to stake and trellis your plants and train them
upright, and I might also encourage you do to what's called the single stem method.
I'm not going to cover that in this video, but check my other videos for a really good
video actually on single stemming your tomato plants.
It's really easy.
Basically you're just punching out the suckers out of the armpits.
I mean, literally, that's just what it is.
Think of just my armpit, and there's a plant out of my armpit, and John doesn't want a
plant out of his armpit, so you're just going to train it up, single stem it all the way
up and, you know, once plant per one square foot, it should be fine.
So, I'm going to planting mostly indeterminate plants, the ones that keep vining out and
keep producing tomatoes forever, and I'm hoping that I won't get a frost this year.
Got my fingers crossed that the weather will be really nice and it'll be the tropics now
in the California.
I doubt that'll happen but I could always wish, but in any case, I'm going to plant
the tomatoes.
Because they are indeterminate, I'm going to give them more space.
I'm going to plant them 24 inches apart, so 2 feet apart.
So, you can see that, you know, because I'm planting indeterminates, and I'm planting
them 24 inches apart, you know, I can't fit as many as if I were planting them one foot
apart.
Now, there are pros and cons in planting determinate versus indeterminates, and single stemming
versus not single stemming, and I'm not really going to get into that today, but I'm just
going to show you I'm planting my plants 24 inches apart.
Last year, actually 2 years ago, I did plant them 18 inches apart, and it was just too
close and I had small trellises.
This year I'm happy to say that I'm using the Texas tomato cage.
So, this is actually just the top half of the Texas tomato cage out here that I'm only
going to use for the spacing only.
This is not the full thing, but after you see it all built and planted out you'll see
the full trellises.
I mean, they're 6 feet tall, and I think this is actually one of the key considerations
that's going to make my plants grow a lot better.
Another reason why you want to have some distance between the plants besides lie the roots,
letting the roots grow and if your plants are too close together, the roots are too
close together, they're basically going to steal, you know, nutrients form each other.
It's like when you and your brother, you and sister were kids and you'd fight over that
one piece of cake, you know, well, hey, if you each got a piece of cake, you won't be
fighting, but even me and my brother, we'd be fighting over who got the 2 millimeter
larger piece of cake, so we have a scheme.
I'd cut and he'd choose, and as soon as I'd cut I'd say, 'I want that one,' and it would
be the smaller one and he would always go for the smaller one, but in any case besides
just the roots, because, you know, being able to get the nutrition, above the ground all
the plants basically need to get nice air flow and air circulation and also light form
the sun, you know.
If the plants are too close together, they're going to shade each other out and each plant's
not going to get as much sun.
If the plant doesn't get as much sun, then it's not going to produce as much fruit for
you.
Same thing with the air circulation.
If there's not enough air circulation between the plants, then that's not good either.
So, I've found that 2 feet spacing's pretty good, and get them some space to breath with
the Texas tomato cages are definitely a really good thing.
So, next I'm going to start laying out the bed and we're going to use the Texas tomato
cage.
So, these are the real bottoms that go into the ground.
They unfold, and these long stakes go into the ground to anchor this cage into the ground,
you know, so it's not going to wobbly or tip over.
It's going to be nice and stationary.
Once we've out this in, you can but the extension in that goes up to the top to get it up to
the 6 feet high height.
Now, I do recommend these tall 6 foot tall Texas tomato cages when you're specifically
suing indeterminate, those are the vining plants that'll pretty much grow forever until
it gets too cold.
So, these cages are really good.
I mean, these are just serious cages.
Basically what you're going to do is you're going to make an investment I these cages
and they're pretty much going to last you forever.
They fold flat to store.
They can be used year after year after year.
I like them a lot.
So, next, let's go ahead and do the layout.
Normally I would do the layout, if I wasn't doing the cages, but using a standard tape
measure and taping off, you know, how far the plants are going to go.
I like to use things like these flags or little sticks to denote where I'm going to put the
plants, you know.
If I'm measuring out, I could measure there, and then I'm going to basically offset my
rows, have 3 rows, put one there, one there, but, you know because I have the cages, and
these cages are approximately 20 inches from end to end, I'm going to let the cages do
my spacing for me.
So, if I just put 2 of these cages next to each other, middle-to-middle, it's going to
be 20 inches.
So, I want 24, which is, you know, my 2-foot spacing.
So, we're going to let the cages do all the measuring for me and it's going to be about
right.
So, let me go ahead do that next.
Alright, first Texas tomato cage going into place.
Man, that's nice and solid.
Fits right in the ground.
I mean, this is definitely a sturdy cage.
There's cage number one.
I just got to do the rest of them.
Now, as you can see, we have 2 side by side and we could do like 2 rows all the way down,
but what I'm going to do is I'm going to offset the middle row.
So, the goal is to be able to reach into the middle one between all the space that the
ones on the side are growing out.
So, with these cages, it'll make that pretty easy to do.
So, let's go ahead and place this third row, or the middle row.
So, literally, where I put these cages, right in the middle of the cage is where the tomato's
going to get planted.
Already got 10 cages in the bed.
This'll be the 11th cage going in the bed.
We got them nice and evenly spaced and, I mean, it's just really easy to set these guys
up.
You just push them into the ground, these long stakes go right in the ground.
I think that's probably about at least a foot and a half, but then you van determine if
you want it all the way into the ground or almost to the ground.
I think I've basically out them a bit a foot into the ground for each trellis.
So, let's go ahead and but this last one in.
So, there you go.
I got all 11 trellises in place.
Once again, these are the Texas tomato cage, nice heavy duty.
They fold and this is only the bottom half and the top half is actually right here.
Go ahead and grab on the these guys and this just basically unfolds once again and then
you just need to line these guys up, line them up and put them in there and it's kind
of like a little extension thing.
Goes together that easy and there it is, there's the full cage made.
So, for now were just going to go ahead and keep the bottom halves on and when we plant,
you know, we might just let the plants grow up a little while before we put the tops on
because this actually get kind of big and it's not quite needed yet.
So, I like that you have the capability or the option of, you know, leaving the cage
on full or leave it half height.
So, it looks just a little bit cleaner, you know, until you really need to cage around
the tomato plants.
Next I'm going to go in the back, get the tomato plants out, and I'm going to pant them
up.
Got everything planted out.
Worked all good.
Out the Texas tomato cages in the bed.
Once again, we only put half of them on.
The other half's going to go and this is basically going to be 6 feet tall.
So, that's definitely going to be enough support for the tomatoes and this is nice 'cause you
can reach in.
really nice compared to what I was using in prior years, basically some galvanized fencing.
So, definitely really good and we're just going to go ahead and let these grow little
bit taller before we out on the extensions there.
So, no real big trick to planting them out.
Basically, you know, I took off some of the leaves and planted them fairly deep, as deep
as I could go and so that they'll still be some foliage above, you know.
Tomatoes you could plant them deeper up the stem because they will root out the stem.
Peppers may also do that although I've heard mixed reports, but with the tomatoes it's
always better to bury them a little bit deeper but other than that when I dig the whole other
than burying them deeper I use this stuff here, just basically microbial inoculant.
So, I like that a lot and previously we had actually enriched the bed with rock dust and
worm castings and some kelp actually, but now it's all planted out.
Next job is to basically readjust the drop emitters since we had one, 2, 3, 4, 5, rows
on the drip emitters and we don't need to use all of them.
We're going to actually plug some of them up, take some emitters out and, you know,
just let it drip like normal.
Let's see.
Other things I might do, I might plant some basically in here to go along with.
It's a nice companion pant to the tomato and also plant some marigolds which will look
really nice probably along the borders, and that'll work out well like it did last year,
just looked really beautiful.
So, hopefully you enjoyed this episode learning more abut planting 11 tomato plants in a 4-foot
by 10-foot bed.
Once again, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
We'll see you next time and keep on growing.