The best tomato plants I ever grew-were in old kipper boxes

[michael johnson]

Strangely enough my most ideal type and growth plants were grown many years ago in old kipper boxes, (kippers or Bloater herrings ), these wooden boxes were about 18"inches by 10" by about 3" inches deep- made of a kind of pine wood, we used to fill these trays with a compost of garden soil and leaf mold only, then the seeds were sown in rows accross the box width- normaly we had 100% germination.

But the strange thing was all the plants remained short and compact and mostly formed a flower bud truss in the crown before transplanting- the roots used to run all around the bottom of the wooden box in a thick mat of roots- but when you tipped them out in order to seperate them up- there was always a thin coating of a kind of white threadlike fungus growing on the box sides- the plants seemed to like its company and thrived alongside it, I am not sure if this was what they call myccileum or some name like this.

The thing that struck me the most was the complete lack of legginess of any kind, they always remained short and compact- unfortunatly I cant get the kipper boxes these days as its all plastic everything.