Dave2000
Deeply Rooted
At some point, someone told me you're supposed to bury them deep enough that the soil covers everything up to the first set of leaves so that's always how I do it, but I also bury them in a concave depressed soil area so I can conserve water a little having it pool around the stem, but after a full season the soil has washed into the depression so they are a couple inches deeper still.
That seems to work fine for me and mine usually do get bumps for a few inches above the soil still, but one of these days (maybe next year) I'm going to do an experiment... I've often wondered if it would help a plant if you heaped dirt on the base till you have buried the first big split of the vine so each individual stem wasn't dependent on only the center stem to draw nutrients out of the soil.
That seems to work fine for me and mine usually do get bumps for a few inches above the soil still, but one of these days (maybe next year) I'm going to do an experiment... I've often wondered if it would help a plant if you heaped dirt on the base till you have buried the first big split of the vine so each individual stem wasn't dependent on only the center stem to draw nutrients out of the soil.
