Planting Tomatoes

I finally got to plant my tomatoes.  Today I had both time and dry weather!

I planted the following tomatoes:
1884
black cherry
black krim
blondknofchen
bloody butcher
chocolate stripes
Fred Limbaugh
Henderson's Wins All
Italian heirloom
Japanese trifele
mortgage lifter
orange Russian
pineapple
Roma
supersweet 100
sweet tangerine
Wolford's wonder

Here's a tomato 'pineapple' seedling.

I pinched off the lower leaves so that I could bury the stem deep. Tomatoes do much better if they are buried deep. Their stems, if buried, will develop roots all along the buried part of the stem. Burying a lot of the stem allows the tomatoes to grow an extensive root system.

I dug a 6-10"deep hole for each tomato plant and added some used coffee grounds and crushed egg shell the the dirt in the bottom of each hole. In the past, I have had problems with end rot on my tomatoes. End rot is caused by a calcium deficiency in the soil. The egg shells will slowly release calcium around the roots of the tomato plants. Bone meal can also be used as a source of calcium. The coffee grounds will serve as a source of extra nitrogen to the growing plants.

Finally, I buried the tomato plants deeply in the bed.  I probably buried 70-80% of each plant.