Growing Tomatoes in 6" of soil?

I'm new to SQF gardening, can you grow tomatoes in 6 inches of soil? I was also thinking about leaving out the weed cloth to allow the roots to go deeper below the box. Also the area where I plan to grow has a lot of gophers and in the past they have eaten our vegetables.

rpugh wrote:I'm new to SQF gardening, can you grow tomatoes in 6 inches of soil? I was also thinking about leaving out the weed cloth to allow the roots to go deeper below the box. Also the area where I plan to grow has a lot of gophers and in the past they have eaten our vegetables.

My beds are 18" high with the first 12" filled with topsoil, and the top 6" MM. The tomato roots in my beds go much deeper than the top 6".  We, too, have a serious gopher problem, and I put a 1/2" hardware cloth down on the ground before placing the raised beds on top of it to stop the gophers from burrowing into the beds and destroying the roots.

Tomatoes can be pretty forgiving. Unfortunately I lost the origiinal photo, but his one is two days after transplanting. It's an 8 inch tomato growing out of a 1 inch soil block! Growing a plant that big wasn't my plan ... I just didn't have a square to put it for awhile.

rpugh wrote:I'm new to SQF gardening, can you grow tomatoes in 6 inches of soil? I was also thinking about leaving out the weed cloth to allow the roots to go deeper below the box. Also the area where I plan to grow has a lot of gophers and in the past they have eaten our vegetables.

Can they grow in a bed with 6" of properly made Mel's Mix?  The answer is yes.  This is a photo of 7 indeterminates growing in a 2'x7' table top bed filled with 7" of Mel's Mix at the beginning of the long season.  The height of MM drops throughout the summer because the compost is being broken down into nutrients by the microbes so the roots can uptake them.  The only advice I give for growing tomatoes in TT beds is to water more often as the roots can't go deep for deeper water like if they were planted in an on-ground raised bed.  Water goes deeper in the underlying soil/dirt by gravity.  A second advice for tomatoes in table top beds, is to plant every other square in a check board pattern.  It's a water issue, not a nutrient issue.  I have interplanted with small plants like dwarf marigolds and petunias.

Weed fabric will not stop roots, neither growing deeper nor coming over from a nearby bush and coming up into the bed filled with yummy MM.

1/2" hardware cloth under the bed (on the ground) will stopped burrowing critters.  Just make sure they can't squeeze between the bottom of the bed and the hardware cloth.  On wood frames, the hardware cloth can be Romex stapled to the bottom.      

This is a photo of Cherokee Purple tomatoes that I grew from seeds that markqz sent me when I could not find the seeds for sale online.  Again, only 7" of MM to start the long summer.