Tomatoes as Ground Cover (?)

I have a lot of volunteer cherry tomatoes this year. And most of them, I’ve just let grow. It’s been nice to get the extra tomatoes and interesting to observe how they do in their different places. I have one bed that contained fall and winter veggies, but the cherry toms took over once everything was harvested.

The plants are indeterminate. I didn’t stake any of these because I was curious how they would do growing on the ground. They’ve managed to produce quite nicely. They tend to sprawl out of the bed, so I lay the vines back over the plants to keep the aisles clear. They’ve done so well, that I began to wonder if I could use them as ground cover somewhere. I had just the place, too. 

The above photo was taken down in our woods, in the goat browse. Our land is a series of ridges descending toward the back of the property, and some of the ridges have a dip in the uphill side, kinda like a very shallow swale. Were they deliberately made that way? I have no idea. But when it rains, these dips catch and hold water fairly well. They aren’t very deep and they are only roughly level, so with some improvement, I think they would make nice swales. 

For my tomato experiment, though, I was thinking about the ridges. Years ago, I placed logs and branches just below the ridges to help catch runoff and slow erosion. Much of that has settled over the years and needs more added, but I’ve also been wondering about planting something on the top of the ridges. Dan has taken out a number of dead or old trees, so the ridge here receives quite a bit of sun. The cherry tomatoes don’t seem to mind partial shade, so this became the spot for my experiment.

 I chose spots where the soil was bare and then scattered the seeds.

The first time I tried this, I just left them scattered on the ground. When I came back a couple of days later, something had eaten them! Birds? Squirrels? Chipmunks? Opossums? Skunks? Could have been any of the above. This time I covered them with soil that I scraped up from the natural swales.

There are a lot of tree roots there, but any improvement on the depth of the almost-swale would certainly help.

To protect the soil from washing in heavy rain, I mulched it with leaves.

Will it work? Time will tell. Likely, it won’t grow until next year. I think it would be neat to see the ridge covered with sprawling tomato plants. They would provide ground cover plus food for wildlife and us too. Best of all, the goats don’t eat tomato plants, so this may work very well.