Green Thumb : Sometimes You Can’t Improve on Nature : Tomatoes: Despite gardener’s attempts to stake or climb them, these plants do just fine if left to sprawl.
The six-pack of tomato plants we buy at the nursery is quite a bargain--the plants are young, eager and educated.
They already know more about hydraulic engineering than we could assimilate in a year at Caltech, and are equally well-grounded in the biologic sciences, the techniques of mass production and the processes they must follow in order to win neighborhood acclaim. All of this information is inherent in the DNA passed down from their progenitors.
From this, it appears that they may understand the business of producing tomatoes somewhat better than we do, and should be allowed to do it their way, which is both efficient and orderly.
Given garden space, the roots test the soil for texture, nutrients and moisture content; the leaves, for ambient temperatures and available sunlight. The plant then plans its production lines in accord with these findings. It knows how many blossoms to make, what sizes of branch and lengths of stem will be needed to nourish the fruit, and, importantly, what area of leaf surface will be required to power its operations.
Its objectives in all of this are not directed toward a salad bowl or a ketchup bottle, but the survival of its species. It plans to spread its branches as far as possible and deposit its fruits where the seeds will sprout in the coming spring. It cannot know that it may be staked and tied, or confined in a wire cage.
Nor has it any intention of climbing, for it has no tendrils. It plans, instead, to rise two or three feet, bush out and let its branches sprawl. Sprawl, for very good reasons: One, it is able to collect the most in sunlight this way, with few of its leaves shading others. Two, as the weight of the developing fruits bow the branches down, gravity takes over, as in a siphon, and keeps the nutrient juices flowing to where it is needed with little or no effort on the plant’s part.
Just how many gallons of liquids are transported this way, month after month, and how much energy saved, only the plant knows. But its cleverness in getting so much work done for free suggested an experiment to me: What if the tomatoes were planted in a raised bed and the branches draped over a low railing? Would that not help the plant juices flow to the tomatoes?
The bed, three feet deep and six yards long, was given a bottom layer of rotted compost, six to eight inches deep, to retain moisture. It was then filled with prime topsoil mixed with commercial humus that did not contain any manure. Such manure is usually obtained from feeding lots where the piles are sprayed for fly control and retain toxics which inhibit plant growth.
The tomato plants (three Better Boys and two Beefsteaks) were given liberal portions of Osmocote, a timed-release fertilizer that lasts for eight months. Expensive, but good. The plants responded nobly. In 10 days they blossomed, in three weeks they were bushing out and setting fruit.
The experiment, it should be noted, was not made by the scientific method; the only “control” plants were the spare ones from our six-packs, given to neighbors.
They were no doubt given the proper underground incentives but have not fared so happily above. Some were staked, some caged. In passing, one saw that they bore scarcely half as many tomatoes as their more fortunate siblings, and heard, in imagination at least, the groans of plant machinery that had to pump nutrients uphill.
