Hi Teri,

Welcome to the forum! We are a friendly bunch and always welcome visitors here. Once you're posted here, you're not a visitor any more....you're family....so consider yourself one of us now, and we're happy to welcome you to our family of gardening maniacs. In case you haven't noticed by reading some of the threads, we have folks who post here on this forum not only from Oklahoma, but also from Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri. It is a nice, big extended family.

I'm not too far from you, in Love County just over the river from Gainesville, Texas. When I lived in Fort Worth, I had blackland prairie soil too.

With a 4' x 4' bed, I probably would put only one or two indeterminates and whether I chose to go with one or two would depend on the ultimate mature size of the specific variety or varieties you chose to plant. Some indeterminates get much larger than others. The 16" deep bed will be a really nice depth for growing tomatoes so I think two plants will do well there as long as they are evenly matched in mature size so neither one gets significant larger than the other and crowds it too much.

I do agree, by the way, that the west side of your house would be too hot in zone 7b, unless you shade the plant for part of the day with shadecloth. However, if you still have that planting bed and want to use it, it would be a great place for heat lovers like dwarf okra, sweet potatoes or purplehull pinkeye peas/blackeye peas of any kind.

Do you have any specific tomato varieties in mind for that 4' x 4'?

Dawn

Dawn is the tomato expert here, so you can count on what she says. I can tell you that four is two inderterminates too many for a 4x4 bed because I did that a couple years ago and learned the hard way. So now I do two.

I would put four along one side and put a trellis next to them to tie them up.

boomer - The way your prune your vines, that would probably work, but most of use don't prune and want all of the leaf coverage that vine can grow. Different strokes for different folks. LOL

I have started Tomande and Carbon. Don't know how they'll do, they are both new to me, but sounded fun ;-)

I also have Black Cherry but will probably do it in containers.

You can't go wrong with Black Cherry, and I think Carbon may work well for you. In my garden it was much earlier than I had expected for that size tomato. I will plant it again.

Yes, I do prune all suckers off and you need really good soil to plant 1 per square foot.

I'm sure you do, and I can't argue with your success. I just do it a different way. Your garden was beautiful last year.

Teri,

Both Carbon and Tomande will do well for you but I would put Black Cherry someplace else because it is a monster of a plant.

Tomande is a short internode plant, so even though it is an indeterminate, it remains more compact than most indeterminates. I last grew it 4 or 5 years ago, but remember it as being an early producer and a good producer.

Carbon produces large crops of delicious tomatoes and I don't remember it being a really huge plant in my garden (I haven't grown it the last couple of years) so I think it and Tomande will share the 4 x 4 bed nicely without either one of them trying to dominate the other plant too much. Carbon likely will be a bit larger, but not so large it will overwhelm Tomande.

I hope you'll keep us updated on how they grow for you, and continue posting here now that you've joined the family.

Dawn

Most of my beds are 4x4 too, so I have this same question with myself every year. So can I plant other things in there too, like basil or peppers, something smaller? My thought was to plant one tomato in each corner, but could I do alternating corners and something else in the others? Like this:
-----------------------
�tomato�basil �
-----------------------
�basil �tomato�
-----------------------

That's a great description of how you do it.

I was trying to think of a way to say 'plant them in opposing corners' but couldn't think of how to illustrate it. Kudos!

Dawn

Thanks guys.

My last frost date is March 15 or so and I aim to get them out there pretty soon after that because it gets so hot so fast here, so I'll be sure to keep you posted on how they do.

I'm a little late to the party, but I'll throw in my 2 cents:

If you have great soil and take great care of them, you could have one huge and extremely productive plant, or you could have two nice and productive plants, or you could do 4 plants and probably get a little production from each of them.

I have put 4 into spaces that sized and often I get one slow plant that doesn't do much, a couple that give me fair production and maybe one that does well. If you just want to get a variety of fruit and total yield is not so important, 4 plants might do it for you but you might be disappointed in the total crop. I would personally do 2 in that space or maybe three if they are not types that make huge plants, or just one if you want huge fruit or a lot of one variety.

If I water and mulch well, I usually can get more out of a space than you are suppose to, but when I don't do a good job with water and mulch, I often get a lot less than good growers would.

So in a bed 4' x 16' I could only expect to put 8? max 10 plants? Yep...my 2 new raised beds aren't going to be big enuf....oh wurra, wurra....

And welcome Teri! I too am building raised beds on the east side of my house for the same "sun-exposure" reasons you cited. Seriously, you're "family" now so you gotta come back and keep us (aka ME!) posted on your progress so we can all learn.

Paula

Paula, You can put as many plants into the new beds as you want, but your degree of success will vary depending on how crowded they are and on how much you pamper them.

My results are a lot like Scott's. When I crowd what I know are too many plants into a bed, I know I'll get less fruit per plant. Generally, the more crowded they are, the worse the results. However, you can get away with crowding them a little if you plant them in rich, well-improved soil, water often and feed them when they need it. Close attention to detail and pampering can make up for some of the crowding.

I have planted tomatoes as close as maybe 12-15" apart and as far apart as 3'. I definitely see less disease, better production, etc. with the 3' spacing. However, if I use the 3' spacing, I have a lot fewer plants. I usually compromise with 2' spacing. With mega-giants like Tess's, even 4' spacing isn't enough but 6' spacing might be.

Dawn

Paula, most of my beds are 4' by 16' and I normally put 14 to 18 pepper plants in one, or 8 to 12 tomato plants depending on type. I have gone up to 14 Roma-types in a bed and they still did well sometimes. Like Dawn said, disease and overall yield would tend to make me stay on the low density side, but I can never stop myself from buying or starting too many plants of too many types and then I end up putting them too close together and regretting it when they don't do as well.

One thing that lets me get by with higher densities is that I pull most of mine up at the end of July when it is vacation time and I am sick of the garden, so I don't have to care for the indeterminants after they have grown really large.

Tim once went to a local residence as a first responder on a medical call. Since I already was with him in the car when the pager went off, of course I went with him. However, I stayed outside in the car since I am not a first responder. Sitting outside in the car gave me a chance to sit and stare at the sparsely populated garden which had exactly 3 tomato plants spaced about 8' apart. The plants were gorgeous, but all I could think about was how I would have put so many more plants into that same space, which by the way covered an area about 12' wide and about 30' long.