Pro Gardeners Use This Secret Hack to Grow the Best Tomatoes

Try it for yourself before planting this spring

If you want to grow bigger tomato plants, there is a foolproof tomato planting hack that could ensure stronger, healthier plants. Pruning the bottom leaves off the seedling and planting the tomato stem as deep as possible or horizontally can give you optimal results.

We spoke with gardening expert Kathy Jentz to get her insights on a tried and true "secret" tomato-growing hack that she (and many other pros) swear by. Read on to learn how shockingly simple this hack is and how to try it in your garden this spring.

Meet the Expert

Kathy Jentz is a gardening expert, speaker, and author of The Urban Garden.

How to Plant Tomatoes for Healthier Plants

Instead of placing only the existing roots of a tomato plant in the soil the traditional way, this "secret" hack used by Jentz and other successful gardeners calls for stripping the leaves of a seedling and planting the stem horizontally.

This tomato planting hack works because tomato stems buried in the soil shoot new roots. "This gives the root zone a lot more area to spread and get established, making for much stronger roots and a healthy air plant in the end," Jentz says, adding that she's "had healthier and more robust plants" since using this method.

Take these steps:

1. Strip off the lower leaves from a seedling stem and leave the top few strongest and largest leaves. (You can then simply bury this stem deep in the soil leaving those leaves peeking out at the top or proceed to the next step, which is Jentz's preferred method.)

2. Dig a narrow horizontal trench in your soil and lay the now-stripped seedling stem inside it.

3. Gently bend up the top few remaining leaves so they are above the soil by just 3 to 5 inches.

4. Backfill the soil over the trench and water well as you normally would.

Don't be afraid of burying your tomato plants too deeply. You can plant up to two-thirds of the seedling stem in a hole or in a trench. All along the stem where leaves are currently sprouting will be new roots to anchor the seedling in the soil and get nutrients to these heavy feeders. In addition to a healthier plant, the tomato plant will be sturdier and better able to withstand strong winds.

Do Any Other Plants Benefit from This Method?

While this strategy is fairly unique to tomatoes, Jentz notes that a similar method is used to successfully grow potatoes (a member of the same plant family).

For potatoes, she says, plant the seed potatoes in a hole as you would with any bulb or tuber plant. However, once the plant has shot up a foot or so outside the soil, you fill in with dirt, burying the plant and leaving only about 3 inches of top leaves still showing—a process called "hilling your potatoes." Repeat this process a couple of times throughout the season as the plant grows taller.

When it's time to harvest and you dig through that hill, "you'll see the root tubers—aka potatoes—have formed all along each of the levels that you buried the plant, giving you a much greater harvest than if you had just left it at the initial planting level," Jentz says.

How Else Can You Help Your Tomatoes Thrive?

Consider the temperature outdoors when aiming for the best and healthiest tomato plants, adds Jentz. It's common to accidently plant seedlings outdoors far too early in the season when the soil is too cold which can cause stunted growth. Instead, Jentz advises focusing on the soil temperature, not the air temperature. Ideally, plant tomato seedlings when the soil's temperature is between 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit to help them grow into large, high-yield plants.

Read Next: Blossom End Rot on Tomatoes: Causes and Fixes

Read the original article on The Spruce.