Stringing up container tomatoes

elight · November 25, 2016

In my never-ending battle with disease since moving to Florida, I think that for my next crop (plant out in February), I will experiment with pruning to a single stem. All of my successful plants are in EarthTainers on my screened-in pool deck (raised beds outside have become too susceptible to pests).

So, two questions:

1. Any thoughts on a good way to create such a device? I'm thinking about taking metal conduit (or PVC) and notching it so that it slips right onto the top of the cage. The strings can then be tied off to the pipe and hung down, and the stems secured with string clips.

2. What do people do when the plants get above the top of the trellis? My cherry tomato plants are 2-3 feet above the 6' cages at this point.

3. How many single-stem plants do you think it's realistic to grow in an EarthTainer? Based on the square gardening recommendation for 1 sq. ft. per single-stem tomato plant, my intuition is telling me 4-6.

November 25, 2016	#1
elight Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Allentown, PA Posts: 349	Stringing up container tomatoes In my never-ending battle with disease since moving to Florida, I think that for my next crop (plant out in February), I will experiment with pruning to a single stem. All of my successful plants are in EarthTainers on my screened-in pool deck (raised beds outside have become too susceptible to pests). So, two questions: 1. Any thoughts on a good way to create such a device? I'm thinking about taking metal conduit (or PVC) and notching it so that it slips right onto the top of the cage. The strings can then be tied off to the pipe and hung down, and the stems secured with string clips. 2. What do people do when the plants get above the top of the trellis? My cherry tomato plants are 2-3 feet above the 6' cages at this point. 3. How many single-stem plants do you think it's realistic to grow in an EarthTainer? Based on the square gardening recommendation for 1 sq. ft. per single-stem tomato plant, my intuition is telling me 4-6.