One more question from the rookie

[Keger]

Thanks for the tips on what to grow in the blast furnace down here.

So anyway, I'm in at a farmers market down the road and there is a place to sell out of the back of the truck at a busy but somewhat rural intersection close by. I'm a golf professional by trade, and a guy I teach has a nice restraunt, so I have that deal if my stuff is good. Cool.

I planted seeds and have all these midget plants running over the extra room in the house, I'll end up with a few hundred.

Will till soon, plant, and then......... hold it!

So now I gotta stake or cage these things. I'm thinking staking except for the Romas, and I'm thinking about hooking up a good drip watering system.

Any tips on staking that many plants would be much appreciated. I have acess to a lot more growing land if it works, so again, thanks in advance.

[Mudman]

I like to stake my tomatoes and am not a fan of cages, but if I was doing "a few hundred" plants, I don't think I would do either. Doesn't seem like it would be very cost effective and there are many people who just let them ramble with great results.

[FILMNET]

Florida weave is easy you must have a short season anyway Brad uses it at his farm wildboarfars. Just make sure you use wooden sticks dipped in something that will slow down rot I buy them they are dark brow dipped in something. I use wood because as the string get wet it stretches with weight i use a staple gun to staple the lose string weekly. Works great if you have big fruit just lift the branch up and tie to the strongest closest string Funny if i keep the branches off the bottom and tie branches on top string left and right side they look like church crosses. But this way all fruit is off ground and get sun I just go out to the garden once a day with staple gun and the bag of that green velco around lettuce when you buy it. If you save it all year you will have a huge bag holds tight also.

[dice]

There are endless discussions of the best way to support tomatoes.

My favorite, Tomatohenge:
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=19126

A good explanation of Florida Weave:
http://www.foogod.com/~torquill/barefoot/weave.html

A picture of the Florida Weave staking system in action:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Qgn8W7Khkw...to+trellis.JPG

People in windy areas sometimes put down several inches
of straw for mulch and let the tomatoes sprawl on it
to keep them out of the wind (not recommended in slug
country).

Other methods: building an overhead support for strings that plants
are attached to as they grow; bamboo A-frames with a bamboo pole
for each plant; building a vertical woven trellis that plants are tucked into
as they grow; concrete-reinforcing wire cages; staking each plant
individually; and so on.

[Keger]

Thanks for the help guys, this place has been really great. I appreciate it all.

[FILMNET]

I use a shorten Florida weave i like only 1 stem for the 24-36" tall plants for the first 30 days . i get fruit on the bottom, more when the plants has 2-3 stems, and more on the tops. But the 1 stem in on the 7' for 50 day or more

[dice]

There was a convenient looking system that I saw a picture of one
time that I no longer have a URL for. It used "goat fence" (searching
for that occasionally has never turned up quite the same thing) that
was set into the ground at about a 15-20 degree angle from the vertical.
Tomatoes were planted on the side away from the lean, and they just
spread out over it as they grew. Occasionally a stem was tucked into the
fence mesh to keep them from flopping over sideways along the direction
of the row, but the fence supported the weight of plants and tomatoes,
and mostly gravity kept them in place. I presume that one could walk on
either side to harvest.

[greyghost]

Dice, Sometimes I see "cattle panels" in catalogs (farm) as goat fencing.
Do you have Tractor Supply stores near you-I know they carry it in different heights. If I wouldn't have gotten more CRW to make cages, I would have
gotten the cattle panels (I think they were 10' long), secured them to t-stakes
and used them as a trellis system. I've seen panels put on a slant for tomatoes but especially for cucumbers.

[Keger]

I lived in the hill country in Texas years ago and actually raised goats. This stock panel will work great, but it is pricey.

[Worth1]

Ive seen thousands of tomatoes staked on a tomato ranch.
They used strippings from the sawmill and tied with bailing twine.
They cut back to about 1 or 2 main stems and let them grow.

Worth

[dice]

The goat fence that I mentioned looked like it would cost as much
as cattle panels. The poles looked like galvanized steel, like chain link
fence posts with a different shape. It had a heavy duty cantilevered
base that probably has the part below ground vertical and the part
above ground at an angle.