This Clever Soil Trick Makes Growing Tomatoes Hassle-Free

Gardening is an exercise in patience; a lesson learned by many blossoming gardeners who spend hours wistfully staring at patches of soil waiting for a sprout. That doesn't mean that gardeners always need patience when it comes to the actual process of gardening. Rather than placing soil in individual pots, precious time can be saved by placing tomato seedlings (or seeds) directly into bags of soil. Tomatoes are particularly prone to soil-borne disease and blight, so they benefit from the isolation of a sterile, pest-free soil source, as well as greater moisture retention.

This "no dig" method has gained popularity because it's so simple, replacing the need to plant in pots or to prepare healthy garden-beds. All you need is a blade and a bag of soil suited to your purpose, whether that's nurturing seedlings or sprouting new seeds. Before you make any cuts, fluff your bags like a pillow to loosen them up. Then, make several small incisions or holes across one entire side of the bag, not missing the corners. This allows water drainage and prevents roots from rotting, an easy mistake to make. That becomes the underside when you flip the bag over and create another larger opening on the top in which to plant your seedlings. Do this by cutting an "X" shape into the top a little bigger than your root ball, and planting your seedling in the centre of the opening and folding the sides in or closing them. 

For tomatoes, the best results come from placing one plant per bag, as they can have greedy roots and fight over nutrients. Overcrowding can lead to struggling plants and a lesser yield. You can get long, specially designed bags for planting several plants, but we're focussing on the DIY approach here. To avoid the bags getting too hot in the sun and trapping too much heat, you can also consider whether one side of a bag is more reflective of light and make that the top side.

Choosing the right type of tomato is one of the top tips for approaching this method. Cherry tomato and other compact varieties do particularly well in bags because they need less real estate for their roots, but many varieties can work with this method. In general, plants that typically do well in containers include determinate and dwarf varieties which can work within the confines of your bag-based garden. Determinate varieties can also make it easier to time your yield in hotter climates. All the minutes saved potting your plants, frees you up for more important tasks, like gazing longingly at these plants and waiting for your next cherry tomato caprese salad to grow.