I've always found growing tomatoes tricky. Every year, I make a new attempt, but the results are inconsistent. One year, I'll get a few worthy of a salad, the next it'll be a total fail.
And as I sat out in my yard recently, I stared at this year's yield – tomato plants that had stopped growing entirely. So, I did what I love to do and headed online to social media to see if I could find an answer.
Fortunately, tomato growing hacks are never hard to find, from using this common kitchen scrap for zero-waste gardening to trying out an ingenious tomato-watering trick, but this time I was looking for something that would switch up my tomato growing game altogether.
Then, I found a TikTok that told me I've actually been doing it all wrong. It turns out we should all be planting our tomato plants horizontally. It might sound crazy, but it's actually a stroke of genius. Here's how it works.
How does it work?
@creative_explained ♬ original sound - creative explained
I'm a sucker for TikTok creator, @creative_explained's videos and I'm not the only one. With over 7.5m followers, he's known for consistently sharing quick home and garden hacks with an enthusiasm that's infectious. I should know; I've been using his money-saving hack for giving my plants a boost this year, and I've been shocked by the results.
But it's this tomato planting hack that caught my attention this time. As he demonstrates, you take a tomato plant and strip all the leaves off the stalk, leaving just the top shoot with one leaf.
Then, you dig a trench in your garden bed. After exposing the roots of your tomato plant and breaking apart the soil at the base, lay the entire plant horizontally into the trench.
Bury the entire stalk with soil, leaving just the top shoot and leaf exposed. Raise just this part and hold it vertically with soil.
He explains: "What's going to happen now underneath the soil is that the tomato will grow roots all along its stem.
It'll start to grow new shoots. The stem pretty much transforms into an entire root system." Genius.
Here's what happened when I tried it
I fear I may have found this hack a little late for the tomato growing season, but with hot weather in my area, I figured I could still transplant outside with a totally new tomato plant to hand.
Planting it horizontally was simple enough, even if it did feel like a strange process. I've had success with @creative_explained's hacks before like using potato peel water in my soil, so I'm looking forward to seeing the results. In terms of process, it was easy to do, though I needed to find a space in my garden bed that was long enough to accommodate.
Fortunately, I recently dug up some old rhubarb that was suffering in the heat, so I had the space to try out this horizontal planting trick. Now, I just need to wait until fall to see the results, but it feels good to try out something entirely new for a change. Growing tomatoes is a tricky business, but this might well be the solution I've been desperately searching for.
