Japanese Tomato Ring

[TomatoDon]

I've seen discussion on this method around the internet, but I've yet to see any truly staunch practitioners of it. For those of you who are not familiar with the Japanese tomato ring, it's basically making a rich mound of organic matter inside a 5 foot diameter ring of support wire (usually concrete re-enforcing wire or something similar), and planting 5 (I believe it is) tomatoes on the outside of the ring, and training them up the wire by tying them. Supposedly the roots grow into the organic material in the center and you have a very productive ring of tomatoes. But there are a few things about this that I have doubts about. Making the roots seek out the organic matter is one of them.

I think we may have discussed it here once, making a large ring, maybe 3-4 feet in diameter, and planting 2-3-4 plants inside. Like a regular tomato cage, just larger, with more plants. I thought that might be a good idea, although I've never tried it exactly like that. I'm still trying to think of a way to plant in the field without using the sprawl method which doesn't work well in this climate, but also not having to have individual cages for each plant.

I am hesitant to plant just one of any variety, since the chance exists that it may be the plant that doesn't do well. I thought I could try disking up the field garden spot, smoothing it, rolling out a 4 foot wide piece of ground cloth, making 3-4 foot wire hoops to hold about 3 of a single variety, and run a drip line down the whole thing. I have a system for the raise beds, and I guess I'm still trying to find a field method so I can grow a lot of extra plants, especially experimental ones, but not have a lot of maintenance as the seasons gets on.

Has anyone here tried this or anything similar?

Don
With over 125 seeds already planted!

[Worth1]

We planted in fields all of the time and thats pretty much what I am doing this year,just not as big

All of the fields we had we just used stakes, sure you don't have the biggest baddest tomato plant but you have so many it wont matter.
We used stakes from the saw mill, left over scrap from the edger.

Worth

[dice]

If you sink two really solid poles at the ends of a row,
either metal or 4x4s, with the tops 6-8' above the
ground, then run cable across the top of them, you can
use a single string per plant overhead support method.
You tie a piece of string to the stem with something
like a loose bowline knot (non-slip), then loop it over
the top cable with enough extra per plant to bring
it about halfway back down, and tie the end to an eye
made in the part of the string coming up from the plant.
As the plant grows, you untie the free end, untie the eye,
then loop the part of the string that starts at the plant
around the growing plant, make a new eye, higher up,
and loop the free end back over the top cable and tie
it to the new eye. As the plant grows, you continue this
process. If it gets beyond the top cable, just let it
droop back down (it has a long way to go to reach the
ground).

You would probably have to experiment with how much
extra string you really need (maybe double it all the way
back down to the young plant the first year, then
see at the end of the season how much was not
used). This will probably vary with cultivar.

I would use something like dcarch's cable anchors
on the cable that connects the tops of the poles.
He made an anchor about the size of a whole bag
of concrete with a steel eyebolt in it, then attached
cable between that and his poles with a turnbuckle
in it between the anchor and the pole, to tighten it up
without having to move the anchor. If the cable at
the top were connected to anchors like that at each end,
just beyond the poles, the top support would stay taught
and not sag as the plants got bigger and developed fruit
(plus you could adjust it with the turnbuckles).

I have seen pictures of setups like this in high tunnel
growing operations, where the infrastructure to support
the strings at the top was designed into the framework
of the tunnel. Someone posted a picture of something
equivalent here at Tomatoville where their rows were
short, and instead of cable at the top they used 2x4s or
2x6s with the long side vertical (less bend than pvc under
load), suspending the strings from those.

Here is a general summary of methods. Look at the "long row"
description, which is essentially what I described above:

http://content.garden.org/tomatogard...dex.php?id=347

I had a picture bookmarked of a leaning goat fence, which
you could just thread the plants through and let them
"sprawl upward", but that would be kind of expensive
and might be a pain to till around, too. It would have to
be at the edge of a row, not right in the center of it.
(Link brings up a blank page at the moment.)

Edit:
No experience with the tomato rings. I did find a piece of
Box Car Willie stem rooted into the ground this year, though.
It was growing on an angled string trellis that sagged in the
rain, letting this one stem trail on the ground. I didn't notice
it until I was pulling the plant at the end of the season.

You could always try *one* Japanese Tomato Ring and see what
happens. If you use indeterminates, how are you going to stake
them once they get taller than the tomato ring?

[TomatoDon]

Hi Dice, and thanks for the info and link. I think what you are describing is a little different from what I was thinking about. I wanted a ring to hold about three of the same variety, so I could keep the varieties grouped together, and a system that once I planted I wouldn't have any maintenance of staking, tying, etc. In this, if they outgrew the cage, as you mention, I would just let them trail back down the outside. I thought if I could get them up a couple of feet that they would continue to grow "up" and I wouldn't have to keep training them. Not really sure how that would work though.

As you say, I may just try one and see how it works. I have quite a few plant/varieties planned for the raised beds and am trying to find a way to plant more varieties in the field that I won't have as much maintenance with.

Thanks for the info. Lots of good ideas in your post, and also in the link you sent. Gracias.

Don

[dice]

I've seen pictures of Japanese Tomato Rings. The plants
are generally planted around the outside, with compost
on the inside. I seem to recall that growers tie the plants
to the fence as they grow, so that the stems will be in close
contact with the compost inside the ring (that way they can
sense that there is something like soil there to root into).

Even if you made the ring as tall as a typical CRW cage,
with compost in the bottom 3' of it or so, the tomatoes
still would not thread themselves through it. They would
probably flop together in the middle, and sprawl on top
of the compost pile in it.

About the only maintenance-free method of trellising
is the cylindrical cage that surrounds the whole plant
and is as tall as it needs to be. (A-frames are close, but
they still need a little work because of the open sides.)
Tomatoes are only "sort of" vines. They are not climbers,
so they do not naturally weave themselves through a trellis
as they grow, you have to do it for them.

Anything else I might suggest would be entirely experimental
(like sinking 4 posts per row, 2 at each corner, and securing
successive horizontal layers of galvanized hog fence or
nylon fish net to them at 2' intervals as you go up the posts;
you probably still want to anchor the posts past the ends
of the row to keep them from sagging inward toward the
center of the row as weight builds up on the horizontal
layers of support).

Edit:

(They would flop together in the middle if you planted them
*inside* the tomato ring, which is not how they are normally
used.)

"... 4 posts per row, 2 at each corner..." should be
"... 4 posts per row, 1 at each corner ....".

[VGary]

THE JAPANESE TOMATO RING
Cindi Sullivan's article, The "Japanese" Tomato Ring, has a long and interesting story. It was first created by a Charleston, SC postman about 40 years ago. It seems a Miami newspaper reporter, Eddie Jones, interviewed Mr. Callahan (the postman) about the Tomato. As Mr. Callahan and Mr. Jones inspected the tomato ring, they talked about tomatoes and Mr. Callahan�s tours in North Africa, Europe and Japan when he was in the Air Force. Somehow or another, Mr. Jones got his facts confused and ended up thinking that the idea for the tomato ring originated in Japan, when in fact, Mr. Callahan just started implementing the idea on his farm in South Carolina.
(Just as an aside, it was Mr. Jones who coined the phrase "Bermuda Triangle" for the area where ships and planes sometimes spookily disappeared east of Florida.)
The story about the Japanese Tomato Ring ran year after year in the Miami Herald, and was picked up by other newspapers across the country. It came to Louisville, when Mr. and Mrs. Bob Rogers were traveling south for a vacation, saw the story in a Macon, Georgia newspaper, brought it home and tried out the idea. Mr. Rogers was so impressed with the tomato production using this method that he called Fred Wiche to do a story about it.
When I first started this job, I had a bunch of requests for "Fred�s Japanese Tomato Ring", but I didn�t have Fred�s files with the instructions. Then finally, one day, just in passing, Paul Rogers---the 84WHAS Sportscaster Extraordinaire---told me that it was his dad who gave Fred the instructions. Small world isn�t it? Here�s how it goes:
You�ll need about 80 quarts of good topsoil. Mr. Rogers buys two bags of topsoil for each ring. If you have an excess of good garden soil, use that; it will take about two wheelbarrows full.
You�ll also need two bags of mulch. Mr. Rogers uses cypress mulch, but you could use any other shredded bark mulch or good quality finished compost.
The only other ingredient is a 10-pound bag of 10-10-10.
Take 15 feet of five foot high farm fence (or concrete construction) wire and roll it into a circle five feet in diameter, placing the cylinder in a sunny spot protected from the north and northwest winds if possible. Clear a seven-foot wide circle and break the topsoil a few inches deep. Place the wire ring in the circle, leaving a foot of cleared soil a foot outside the ring.
Place the mulch or compost six inches deep in the ring and top it with a layer of soil and half the fertilizer. Add another layer of mulch or compost, another layer of soil and 2/3 of the remaining fertilizer on top of that. Save the rest of the fertilizer to sprinkle around the plants.
Pat the topmost layer down in the middle to create a depression to hold water.
Plant four, and only four tomatoes, spacing them evenly around the ring outside the wire. They will look small, but in time they will grow roots under and up into the pile.
Lightly fertilize the new plants. We mean lightly, because too much will wither them.
If things start to look dry, water the plants outside the ring when they are small and inside the ring as they grow. Support the vines by tying them to the wire with soft cloth.
Once tomato production starts pumping, top off the compost with another five pounds of fertilizer. Mr. Rogers harvests about 600 tomatoes per plant per year with this method.
http://jpdurbin.net/recipes/japanese_tomato_ring.htm




Daniel E. Mullins, Extension Horticultural Agent Santa Rosa County

Japanese Tomato Ring



Ever wonder why your best tomato plant is the one that came up in the compost pile, instead of among the ones being nurtured in the garden? There are several reasons why this occurs, and you can recreate this same growing condition by installing a Japanese tomato ring.
Start by purchasing a ten foot long piece of concrete reinforcing wire that will be used to make a large cage. The wire should be 5 feet wide, with a 6 inch mesh size. Join the ends together and tie securely. This will form a cage that is slightly over 3 feet in diameter.
Select a sunny location for installing the tomato ring. You will need a circular area that is about 6 feet in diameter. Spade and turn the soil in this area to a depth of 8 inches. Smooth the surface by raking and place a 6 inch deep layer of compost on the soil surface.
Stand the wire cylinder upright on top of the first layer of compost and secure the base with short stakes. Sprinkle one-fourth cupful of dolomite lime and the same amount of a balanced garden fertilizer over the surface of the compost. Add a 6 inch deep layer of leaves, followed by another layer of compost, plus lime and fertilizer.
Continue alternating layers of leaves and compost until the material on the inside of the wire reaches a minimum height of two and one-half feet. The top layer should consist of leaves. Shape the top layer so that it is concave, with the center being about 2 inches lower than the outside edge.
Place a cupful of fertilizer on the surface of the top layer of leaves, in the center of the pile. Water from the top in order to thoroughly soak the pile.
Set tomato plants in the ground on the outside, and within 2 inches of the base of the wire. A 3 foot wide cage will allow room for 4 plants to be evenly spaced around the outside edge.

Mulch the plants with a 3 inch layer of leaves. Also, mulch a 2 foot wide band around the base of the cage. Keep plants watered until they are well established and the roots begin to grow into the material inside the cage.
Subsequent irrigation is done by applying water to the top, in the center of the pile. This allows for complete watering and movement of the fertilizer without wetting the foliage and stems.
This system has several other advantages. The alternating layers of compost and leaves provide a highly organic medium and plenty of air for the roots. And, no separate staking is required. As plants grow, simply tie them to the wire.
This is a space saving technique with the potential for producing heavy yields of tomatoes. If other tomato growing methods have been unsuccessful for you, give this one a try.
http://www.santarosa.fl.gov/extensio...omatoring.html