Question
We bought a six pack of tomato plants from a nursery recently that were very tall (over 2').  We planted them as deep as possible in our raised bed (about 6" deep), but that still left a lot of the plant above ground.  Will they be ok like this or should we just start over with shorter plants.  Our neighbor says they will be too lanky and not produce anything the way we have them planted now.  They already had blooms on them, so I thought maybe they would be ok.

Answer
They should be just fine. It's no different than if you were to take an existing plant from your garden and relocate it. Just make sure the plants were not root bound. If they were, you need to cut into the roots to break them down so that the roots will spread rather than intertangle.

Also, be sure to stake them as soon as possible, and cut the suckers as they grow. The suckers are the growth that occurs between the main stem and the leaf axil of the flower stem. Eventually, if allowed to grow, they branch out into their own plant. By leaving these on, the plant expends much of its energy into the new growth rather than producing tomatoes. You end up with more tomatoes over the long run, but sacrifice size and space.

The reason I prune the suckers is that I prefer the larger tomatoes and more compact growth. Not only do you have a neater appearance to the plant, but you also have much better air circulation which means the plant is less prone to fungus diseases. To prune, simply snap them off when
they are about 2" in length.

Unfortunately we cannot paste jpg. files or other pictures on All Experts due to the formatting they use. Attached are some websites that give decent illustrations of tomato
suckers.

http://msucares.com/pubs/infosheets/is0560.pdf

http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/pages/g00031.asp

http://ceinfo.unh.edu/pubs/HGPubs/baskweav.pdf#search='tomato%20suckers%20pinch'

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM608.pdf

http://msucares.com/lawn/garden/vegetables/tomatoes/

I hope this answered your question. Please write again if I can ever be of assistance.

Regards,

Mike