The Copper-Wire Tomato Trick

Whether you’re a prepper or not, growing tomatoes is the only sure way to make sure you have good ones. There’s just about no way to buy a decent tomato in a supermarket these days — and the way things are going, visiting a supermarket might soon be a thing of the past anyhow.

Gardeners have all sorts of ways to improve their crops, especially when it comes to tomato plants due to their susceptibility to disease and fungus. Apparently, there’s a notion involving copper wire which says to pierce the plant’s stem with a copper wire in order to make the plant more hardy and resistant to fungus.

Apparently, the basis here is that some effective fungicides have copper in them, so placing copper inside the plant’s stem will allow it to defend against fungus from within.

When I first heard about this, I figured it would fail because I learned years ago that placing copper wire inside underground drain pipes will discourage root growth — and you can kill a tree by simply driving a copper nail into it. But hey, I watched the video anyhow.

“Self Sufficient Me” is the YouTube channel which did the experiment in Queensland, Australia. He “wired” a bunch of different plants to see how they would do in comparison with his many other tomato plants.

Spoiler alert: The copper-wire plants didn’t last as long as others, although they grew at about the same rate, so it’s possible the copper even had a detrimental effect. It certainly didn’t help.

Watch the video for yourself and see what you think.

Do you have any tomato-growing tips & tricks? Please share them in the comments.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.