Fishkiller, folks do that around here all the time, although they use fresh horse manure, and the main reason is that the manure composts, heating the soil. Folks then plant tomato, egg plant, and peppers that grow much quicker with a warmer soil. Later, of course, the plant roots get down into the manure and spread easily. I don't know anyone who does this with a trench, but several folks who do it by excavating a hole the size of a 5 gal bucket, but slightly deeper, then filling it with horse manure, then topping it off with 6 - 8" of soil, then plonking in their tomato plant. As the manure rots, the plant sinks a bit, but not all the way as the earth worms and general soil movement mix the manure in. In this area, night time temps don't get out of the 40's until late June, and soil temps stay very cool until July. Hot weather crops done with the horse manure grow at least twice as fast as those with out, particularly in June.

Raised beds are indeed a factor. When planting tomato plants at grade level, I have grown tomatoes both ways and in average, well-drained soil in an average year (rainy spring, fairly dry summer with sporadic rain, and then a fairly rainy autumn), I don't think one method is any better than the other. The plants grow fine and produce fine either way. That's the short, simple answer. However, gardening in our climate often is not that simple. So, here's the longer and more complicated answer. The differences between deeper planting in holes or more shallow planting in trenches show up if you have difficult soil or a prolonged period of very dry or very wet weather. WITH SOIL THAT DRAINS WELL: In a dry year, if you have soil that drains quickly, you'd want to plant deeply as long as you make sure to water deeply so the water reaches the root zone. If water rationing is common in your area in dry years, you might want to plant in a trench so that the soil can reach the roots in the brief periods of rationing when water is allowed. However, you also need mulch on top of the soil to keep the more shallow roots cool and the soil moist. WITH SOIL THAT DRAINS POORLY AND STAYS TOO WET IN WET YEARS: In tight, dense, compacted soils, particularly those with a high clay content.... In wet years, I'd plant high in a trench in the raised beds so the roots are less likely to become waterlogged. In dry years, I'd plant more deeply but only if I knew I could water deeply as well. You cannot let dense clay type soils get too dry in dry years or water ponds on top of the ground and either rolls off or evaporates before being absorbed. So, while planting deeply helps, you need to mulch deeply as well. Any rain water that falls will percolate down through the mulch to the soil instead of running off bare soil quickly. However, to be honest, I wouldn't plant at grade level in a dry year if I had dense, slow-draining soil. I would plant at grade level in a dry year in well-amended soil that drains pretty well. Now, with raised beds, which is how I generally grow tomatoes: Since my main garden's soil is mostly clay, even my raised beds have a high percentage of clay in them, but it is very well amended so it both holds water well and drains well. After 15 years of amending, it is a loamy clay. The clay ground underneath the beds (and this is a key point) also is amended so it drains better than the unamended clay outside the garden. In my well-drained clay-based raised beds, I vary the planting method with the year....handling a very dry year one way and a very wet one a different way. In a very dry year, I plant deeply and I also water slow and deep with either drip irrigation lines or soaker hoses. The raised beds also are heavily mulched to keep the soil cool and moist, and even the pathways are very heavily mulched in between raised beds in order to insulate the sides of the beds from sunlight and heat. If my raised beds are 8" above grade level, I often will put 8" of mulch in the pathways so that really, just by looking, you cannot tell the beds are raised. In a very wet year (2004, 2007 and April-June of 2009), I plant in shallow trenches in the raised beds in order to keep the roots high enough that the heavy moisture and perpetually wet soil won't negatively impact the plants. I mulch very lightly---just enough to slow down the weeds. I'd rather have the soil exposed to sunlight and wind in order to help dry it out. Sometimes even that isn't enough in our clay, but it is about the best I can do. In 2007, neither deep planting nor trenches worked. We had flooding rains in May-June, and I put as many peppers and tomatoes as possible in large containers because even the raised beds stayed wet too long. In 2009, after getting 12.89" of rain in 24 hours late in April, we had massive issues with wet soil for about 3 months. Most of the tomato plants that had been planted deeply in raised beds (we had severe drought and horrific wildfires prior to this drought-breaking flood) set there with stalled growth for at least 6 weeks, looked awful and seemed near death for a long time. Since the property adjoining ours to the south sits higher than our property, water from that property contained to drain down onto ours for weeks and weeks, but it was draining underground where you couldn't see it. At the lower end of my garden, I could dig down 8 or 10" and hit standing water. I took the back-up tomato plants I had left over and planted them in the one raised bed I hadn't filled with plants before the monsoon began. Even the raised bed was horrifically waterlogged, so I made mounds of soil on top of the raised bed....picture a raised bed with nice tall gopher mounds on it. Then, I planted a back-up tomato plant in the middle of each of those mounds. That's the only time I've ever felt like I had to plant even higher than the raised beds. So, as I hope all this explanation shows.....you have to choose the best planting method for your plants based on how well your soil does drain or doesn't drain as well as on the type of moisture you expect. It is generally a guessing game, but after a decade or so of gardening in the same place, I always can trust my instincts to tell me what to do. One more comment about raised beds. The reason a person should build raised beds is to give them a planting area with great drainage. Raised beds work best for people who have dense, tight, compacted soil....usually with a high clay content, although you'd be surprised at how tightly sand and silt can compact over a long period of time too. To raise the bed, you start with the native soil and amend it. If you have really dense clay, you need to break up the grade level soil first and amend it, then build the raised bed on top of that. By using amended native soil in your raised bed, it is similar to the soil beneath it at grade level and I think that is important in terms of how the water percolates down through the raised bed and into the soil beneath it. (Also it is important in how the roots grow downward as well.....) If your raised beds are very sandy soil or a very light-textured soil-less mix that drains very quickly but it is sitting directly on top of dense clay.....well, that's asking for trouble. You'll have issues with your raised bed drying out too quickly in hot weather while the soil beneath it can hold too much water most of the timel If I had gone to that much trouble to import soil for a raised bed and used 100% imported soil that was not mixed with native soil, I'd plant in trenches that kept the roots mostly in that imported soil. But, I wouldn't have built a bed that way anyhow. To me, if you build a raised bed because you need it for improved drainage, then it makes sense to plant high in trenches. Otherwise, if you are planting in deep holes, you are basically digging down in the raised bed to the soil beneath it in order to put the majority of your plants' roots in the original soil beneath the raised bed. Why, then, have a raised bed at all? However, there's so many extenuating circumstances here..... In a hotter, dryer year you might need to plant deeply in your raised bed anyway in order to keep the roots down deep in cooler, moister soil. And that is why there is no real answer to which way is better.....because there's so many different combinations of variables in terms of temperatures, moisture, the ability of soil to hold and release moisture, etc. None of us has exactly the same soil or the exact same weather, so it is important for each person to experiment with different gardening techniques to see what works best for them in their soil and in their weather. Hope this helps, Dawn

Sheri, Oh, it is drooling time! I can almost taste the tomatoes now. Sungold, Persimmon, and Cherokee Chocolate: if you get ripe tomatoes from only these three plants, you'll still think it is the best tomato year ever, taste-wise! Dr. Wyche's has always done better for me than Kellogg's Breakfast, but then, I have grown DWY for 5 or 6 years and KB for only 2, so Dr. Wyche's has had more opportunity to excell. Dr. Wyche's is a pretty heavy producer, and quite tasty. It also shows great disease resistance. Black Zebra is a very attractive-looking tomato, but I think Black Pineapple (which isn't really black at all, LOL) tastes much better. I have found that every striped tomato I've ever grown has looked pretty, and tasted no better than average. (sigh) Well, I take that back--the one exception is Indian Stripe. Momotaro is probably better than Carmello, but then, your taste buds and your growing conditions are different from mine, so you might find the opposite to be true. I do not think you'll be disappointed in Momotaro though. I haven't grow Alamo. We love Sweet Million and Black Plum, which is our postal carrier's favorite tomato ever since I started sharing them with her several years ago. You're right--I wasn't wild about Japanese Black Trifele, but lots of people love it, so maybe it was just me. Your Mystery Surprise is probably either a tomato that "lost its label" during the seedling growing process, or is from a new grow-out that DJ is trialing and perhaps hasn't even named yet. (I think mysteries and surprises are fun!) Yellow Platfoot Brandywine is yummy, and so is Black Pear. Brandy Boy is the best. If I could only grow one variety, this might be it. There are a few that taste better, but NONE of them can match BB's heavy production and disease resistance. And, even though there are a few that I think taste better than BB, none of them is loads and loads better, only a little better. I don't think I have grown Black Pearl, but isn't it a smallish tomato, more like Black Cherry? I think it is the Burpee hybrid that is said to taste more like a Concord grape after it has been refrigerated? If it even comes close to tasting like Black Cherry, it will be a real winner. I can tell you are ready to get the plants going. Have fun, but be careful and watch the weather. I feel sure we have another freeze or two to get through before Old Man Winter departs and lets us have Spring. I believe you will have more tomatoes this year than last. Remember that so much of last year.....the excessive rainfall, the continual cloudiness, the cooler-than-usual weather all combined to severely affect tomato production. Conditions like that are beyond our control AND exceptionally rare. This has GOT TO be a better year, right? By the way, my little container-grown Better Bush tomato has now formed a second tomato--it is just about the size of an English pea. I am so worried that a deer or possum will get my first green tomato that I carry this plant inside every single night. (It is a very pampered plant at this point. Today I picked up a lady bug and carried her over to the plant and sat her on a leaf, just so she could cruise around and hunt for any bugs that might be lurking.) I am SO looking forward to the first ripe tomato this year. No matter the size of the tomato, we always make BLT sandwiches out of the first ripe one. I am going to order the world's best bacon from the New Braunsfels Smokehouse just so we'll have it for the first BLT of 2008. (Most of the time we eat healthy and watch our fat intake and cholesterol, but BLT time is special and calls for a total disregard of the healthy eating rules!) Keep me posted on how planting goes. I hope to be out in the garden a lot the next few days if the weather cooperates. We are under all kinds of storm watches today, tonight and tomorrow, but so far everything is going either a couple of counties west of us OR a couple of counties east of us, and that's OK with me. Dawn

I just wanted to stop in and say I tried growing toms in the past and they always fell over no matter what I did to support them. Then a few years ago I was told by the greenhouse guy to plant them deep and also after they are planted bend them over on their side and cover the stem with soil as well, I did as he said and let me tell you I had the tallest tomato plants I have ever seen, and they produced fruit like no other I grew early girl (I think) as well as some cherry style, but these plants gave fruit until frost. Then I went and told the greenhouse guy and he told me to dig them trying to keep as much soil on the root ball as possible and hang them upside down in my garage and they would keep rippening. I did and they DID! No new tomatoes but the green ones rippened and otherwise would have froze.