Ways to stake tomatoes?

[Mini Horses]

I've used the PVC type Bitesea pics (they dismantle for easy storage) ... another thing, those in high heat. low rain areas, you can pound a pvc in the ground , add water & have a soaking water supply. I've seen some plant in round configuration, PVC in center. It's inexpensive & save for re-use. Very easy for smaller gardens....those with huge, not so much.

I like the CP for sheer strength. For most that is enough. Some overachievers like Crealcritter, well --- he has his own working well!

MAYBE I will get something prepped to plant later this week. You know how "work gets in the way" !

 

[milkmansdaughter]

I use panty hose rather than baling twine. I buy it cheap at Dollar stores. It has more flexibility than the twine, and stretches a little as the vine grows. I get fewer broken vines in the wind. It was my grandma's favorite use of nylons.
Nylons are also great in the fall for storing onions. Put one in, tie a knot, put another onion in, tie a knot. Keep going until the top of the hose. Hang on a nail in a cool dark place. This keeps the onions separate. When you want an onion, snip off the bottom one, and work your way up.

 

[CrealCritter]

I use cattle panels and T posts, weaving the tomato vines through the squares as they grow so I won't need to tie them up. I place the CP a foot and some off the ground to get extra height for the indeterminate vines I like to grow. I stagger plant them on either side of the CPs to get a good balance for when they get heavy with fruit.

Mama planting mater seedlings when we first started out with the BTE... View attachment 6936

View attachment 6937

For the cherry tomatoes and the big Brandywines, the CP are often not tall enough and I'll get vines lopped over the top like you see in this pic, but a person can always lop off the vines when they get 6 ft or so to force more blossom production on the vines lower down. I've started to do that now, but this pic was taken late in the season when I'd stopped pruning much. This one is a cherry variety that had 10-11ft long vines...there is no trellis available for that, at least not in my garden.
View attachment 6935

I use the CPs for cukes, beans and peas also.

Cattle panels are a great idea - I tried something similar but with rolls of 6' tall 2"x4" welded wire fencing attached to tee posts. The only problem I had was the fencing got to hot and burned the stems/branches/tomatoes or anything else that touched the fence. I also experienced several different kinds of diseases & disorders using fencing. Probably due to the fencing getting to hot in the summer sun.

So I abandoned that idea and settled in on baling twine instead. I experienced a vast improvement in both plant health and yeild, so I'm pretty confident it was a good decision.

 

[CrealCritter]

I use panty hose rather than baling twine. I buy it cheap at Dollar stores. It has more flexibility than the twine, and stretches a little as the vine grows. I get fewer broken vines in the wind. It was my grandma's favorite use of nylons.
Nylons are also great in the fall for storing onions. Put one in, tie a knot, put another onion in, tie a knot. Keep going until the top of the hose. Hang on a nail in a cool dark place. This keeps the onions separate. When you want an onion, snip off the bottom one, and work your way up.

Flexabilty is the exact thing I try to overcome. When I tie up a stem I want it to stay where I tied it up. Gravity is a strange thing isn't it? It's always working to undue what your trying to prevent.

 

[Beekissed]

Cattle panels are a great idea - I tried something similar but with rolls of 6' tall 2"x4" welded wire fencing attached to tee posts. The only problem I had was the fencing got to hot and burned the stems/branches/tomatoes or anything else that touched the fence. I also experienced several different kinds of diseases & disorders using fencing. Probably due to the fencing getting to hot in the summer sun.

So I abandoned that idea and settled in on baling twine instead. I experienced a vast improvement in both plant health and yeild, so I'm pretty confident it was a good decision.

Wowza!!! You must get some mighty hot temps where you live, Critter! I've never felt these CPs grow hot in the sun...I think I'd notice that. Always cool to the touch...maybe your fencing was a dark color that absorbed the heat?

I'll have to try a few experiments in the garden this year with trellising and compare the tomatoes not on the CP with tomatoes on the CP of the same type and planted in the same area and see if there is a difference in disease and yield.

Good heads up!

 

[CrealCritter]

Wowza!!! You must get some mighty hot temps where you live, Critter! I've never felt these CPs grow hot in the sun...I think I'd notice that. Always cool to the touch...maybe your fencing was a dark color that absorbed the heat?

I'll have to try a few experiments in the garden this year with trellising and compare the tomatoes not on the CP with tomatoes on the CP of the same type and planted in the same area and see if there is a difference in disease and yield.

Good heads up!

It was just your standard run of mill gray colored galvanized fencing. And yep it sure got hot in the afternoon sun, there is no shade on my garden It's in full sun from dawn until late in the evening.

 

[Beekissed]

I'm thinking that, if metal cages or trellises affected tomatoes negatively to such a degree as to cause poor yields and disease, someone would have noticed this by now and everyone would have stopped using metal cages around their tomatoes? Wouldn't ALL metal tomato cages get hot in the sun enough to damage tomato vines in this manner?

Having asked those questions, I have noticed more difficulty in my tomatoes since incorporating the CPs(we always staked our maters with wooden stakes)...but in my garden, I can't call that conclusive, as it was also the same time I switched to no till, BTE type gardening, which can also contribute to more disease and lower yields.

I'm doing searches on it and can't find anything about it, but will still do some experimenting in the garden this year with old fashioned wooden supports vs. CPs to see if I can see a difference. It would be interesting to see if this bears out.

If so, I have a ton of uses for these CPs and can go back to wood trellising easily, but I do love the ease of the CP trellises.

You know, I can see where worms and pest bugs would find it an easier travel to just walk down the fencing trellis, visiting each plant, as opposed to having to go to the soil to traverse between plants. Much disease and pestilence is carried by these vectors.

Could be why individual tomato cages wouldn't be affected by such a thing but a long, continuous trellis of metal would?

Interesting topic and worthy of experimenting and following up on!

 

[Farmer Connie]

This is the only photo I can find right now, but we train them to twist up long suspended twine cords. About every other day, wrap the vine around the cord and it will be spiraled eventually.
To efficiently pollinate the flowers, strum the strings up above like a harp.
The stings are seen in the left top portion of the photo. I post a better pic if I find one.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

@Farmer Connie Were you growing those tomatoes in pots?

 

[Wannabefree]

I use T posts and baling twine but I put 4 plants between the posts and go around them with the twine and secure the ends to the posts as the tomatoes grow. I put the twine about every 8 inches and it seems to do pretty well unless it breaks like the old twine I used last year did. So I'm buying new twine this year to prevent such aggravation.