![]() You end up with a whole system of contact points along the entire plant. ![]() Wherever the stem touches the soil, these parenchyma cells grow adventitious roots to anchor the plant more firmly and provide another place to access water and nutrients from the soil. ![]() A single root system where the plant is submerged in the soil isn’t going to be enough to support them. Wild tomatoes are creeping vines that grow along the ground they can get pretty long. (Sometimes, it can be a sign that your plant is stressed if you notice them, your plant may need deeper, more thorough watering.) But back to wild tomatoes. When the roots begin to grow, they can look a little freaky, like tiny cream-colored worms coming out of the stem. This phenomenon is called root primordia. These are the parenchyma cells beginning to divide just below the surface, ready to grow into new roots. If you’ve ever taken a close look at the stem of a tomato, you may have noticed lots of tiny bumps on the plant’s skin. (But tomato hairs have their own set of cool tricks.) Nope, it’s all up to the parenchyma cells. The tomato hairs, or trichomes, are often mistakenly credited for this cool trick. ![]() One of the coolest things parenchyma cells do, though, is turning into roots, known as adventitious roots. For instance, if the tomato grows in a dark, murky rainforest, the parenchyma cells can be enlisted for photosynthesis. They can morph to serve different purposes. These non-descript cells are located just below the epidermal layer, all along the plant’s stems. Tomatoes are different.īecause of the extremes in their native territory, from mountains to deserts to jungles (Peru and Ecuador), they’ve adapted to grow no matter where their seeds land through the means of parenchyma cells. Wild tomatoes take advantage of a trait that all tomatoes have and use it in a way that our garden-grown tomatoes can’t – adventitious roots.įor most garden vegetables, you have to plant them at the same level in the garden as the soil in their pot otherwise, the stem will rot, and the plant will die. Well, when you plant tomatoes very deeply or on their side, we’re mimicking the conditions native tomatoes use to their advantage in the wild. ( But they’re disappearing fast.) Make this handy planting grid for around $15 What does all of this have to do with planting tomatoes sideways? They’ve adapted to survive drought and resist diseases and pests. Wild tomatoes are tough as nails, growing in extreme desert-like conditions and on cold mountain tops. In our quest for bigger fruit with more flavor, we’ve bred out the traits that allow their wild cousins ( Solanum pimpinellifolium) to thrive in the harshest environments. These tomatoes look nothing like their ancestors in South America. The tomato you hold in your hand each summer, even that heirloom variety, is the result of millennia of selective breeding to achieve specific traits. Tomatoes are finicky because we made them that way.Įverything we love about tomatoes – size, color, flavor and abundance – is manmade. And don’t forget, they have to be staked, or they fall over and snap and can take up a ton of room if not pruned regularly.īut it’s not their fault. Tomatoes require lots of nutrients to grow the abundant fruits we expect of them. Pests and disease? They’re prone to all manner of them. They can be water hogs, but don’t you dare get it on their leaves. Tomatoes have a reputation for being the prima donna of the vegetable patch, and it’s not hard to see why. Wild Tomatoes & Their Heavy-Feeding Garden Cousins The same can be said of tomatoes, and it all starts in South America. I’ve often said that to grow a thriving houseplant, you have to understand its native environment. We’ll discuss the rules when determining what tomato varieties should be planted this way. We’ll examine why planting sideways or deeply works with tomatoes but not other plants. Let’s demystify tomato planting once and for all. ![]() There are rules to getting this trick to work well. Or which tomatoes should be planted sideways and which deeply. You can find this advice all over the internet, but it’s rarely explained how and why it works. However, one bit of gardening advice that’s proven to work time and again is to plant tomatoes on their side in a trench or bury them deeply in the soil. Gardening comes with a lot of anecdotal wisdom, and not all of it works. ![]()
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