Tomato cages, no pruning or stakes,one stem?

[Goodloe]

I use a modified version of "the Japanese Ring". My cages are 5ft tall and 24" diameter. I grow 3 plants on each cage. I spend a lot of time pruning and tying...time well spent, tho; I find it to be very therapeutic....

[jtjmartin]

"I spend a lot of time pruning and tying...time well spent, tho; I find it to be very therapeutic.... "


I was trying to think how to describe why I like lean & lower so much. The simple act of going down the line of orderly plants - pruning here and there - lowering some to allow more space - picking fruit - is one of my favorite things to do at the end of a long day. Very therapeutic.

Thanks Goodloe.

Jeff

[TomatoDon]

I grow about 1,000 indeterminates a year and use concrete reinforcing wire on all of them. I plant the seedling, put the cage over it, stake it with a 4' piece of cut rebar, and forget about it. Otherwise, you are staking and pruning and tying all summer. Being in northeast Texas, this should work for you, too.

[nancyruhl]

Wow, TomatoDon, what a beautiful garden, and results. Are the white tubes for watering?

[TomatoDon]

HI Nancy, and thanks. Yes, I used water pipes for watering and adding fertilizer when I had just a few plants in the back yard. Everything I want the plant to have goes straight to the root zone and nothing is wasted, including water.

I did the same thing when I started growing commercially with hundreds of plants but after about 500 plants it was easier to accomplish the same thing with a drip irrigation line under plastic. Yet, it's takes a long time to add a couple of table spoons of anything to each pipe, and to hand-water each plant individually. However, I still think that is the best way even though I don't have enough time to do that with as many plants as I grow now.

I use 30" pipe that is 2" in diameter. This way I can get four watering pipes per 10 foot length of PVC pipe.

[ReginaAnn]

Love your slogan!

[amideutch]

Talk about a sanitary tomato growing setup, Don you got it

Ami

[GrowingCoastal]

Seeing Tippy's paws made me laugh. Very cute and funny.

[AlittleSalt]

Christina, you have already received a lot of good advice. I grew tomato plants with two stems on string fences in the garden one year. There is a lot of maintenance involved with the trimming and fastening the branches to the support strings. That maintenance is basically a daily job, and the more plants you have - the more time it takes...

As you already know, I live around 50 miles south of DFW, Texas. During growing season, it is humid here a lot. Keeping your plants trimmed to get some air circulation is important.

[Cole_Robbie]

Beautiful pics and garden, TomatoDon.

I'm thinking your soul is sandy? I tried the pipe thing in my Illinois clay, and the water just sits in the pipe all summer. I had a frog move in and live in it.

[TomatoDon]

Thanks Nancyruhl, ReginaAnn, Ami, GrowingCoastal, Cole Robbie, and all.

To Cole...my soul is gold, but my soil is sandy loam....but not too sandy. My pipes get clogged, also. I just raise them up and push a 4' rebar down inside to break up the clog and then let it sit on the soil where it wants to without me forcing it. It usually only takes one time per year of this to correct clogged pipes.

Regina, I weighed Tippy a lot when I first rescued her and in a few weeks the tomatoes started coming in, so I thought it would be amusing to compare her weight to one of our big Goliath tomatoes to put on my tomato Facebook page.

Coastal, Tippy showed up around the first of May and I believe she weighed either 9 or 11 ounces. I got her inside and she was skittish the first couple of days until we started handing her, and it was like a light-switch came on with her...she became a human-loving house kitten. One picture shows her the first time we picked her up and she let us wrap her in a towel like a little papoose. I hadn't even cleaned her little face at that time. I named her "Tippy" because the tips of her ears are white. Another picture is her on the scales and another is her on a bale of hay by the tomato patch.

Ami, a lot of the seeds you have sent go here, but probably the most go in my smaller tomato beds, either in the back yard or beside the Cabin, which is near the tomato fiend in the pictures.

Thanks for the replies, and to the OP, I hope you will try concrete re-enforcing wire on some of your tomatoes to see how you like it. In my experience, it's the best method and it seems to produce more and bigger tomatoes.

[jtjmartin]

TomatoDon:

Beautiful tomato garden, kitten and young lady! Thanks for the pics of your growing method.

Jeff

[TomatoDon]

Thanks JTJ. Actually, the young lady is the mayor's daughter and that's the mayor in the background in the blue shirt. It's a lot like Mayberry here.

Incidentally, she's now on a women's softball scholarship and is one of the best fast-pitch pitchers in the country.

[Barb_FL]

Beautiful garden and actually everything.

What do you do when your plants outgrow the cage height?

What do you do with all the tomatoes?

[TomatoDon]

Thank you Barb.

When the top of the plants grow out of the 5' tall cages I don't do anything and they just sag down and it seems to stop the growth of the plant but not the production of tomatoes. I don't figure I'll be picking tomatoes 5-6-7 feet high anyway, so it doesn't matter to me.

Sometimes a big strong limb will grow out of the side of the cage and often have flowers and tomatoes. In that case, I tie them up for support. Instead of using jute twine like I used to, I get thick, fuzzy yarn at Wal-Mart, which isn't nearly as abrasive on the limbs as twine. I'll usually loop it 2-3 times a few inches apart for support and so all the weight isn't on just one piece. Using one piece only inevitably saws into and damages the limb. I have the green tape and it works fine but it's not biodegradable like yarn, and the next year there are bits and pieces of the green tape all over the place.

I grow enough to sell. I put about 5 pounds in a sack on a table on my front porch and people stop by and get them on the honor system. I have a money jar where they leave payment. If anyone is desperate enough to steal a few tomatoes, then they can just have them with my blessings. I really don't have much trouble with that since the local police are my customers, too. Local and area cafes and grocery stores by them also, usually about 100 pounds at a time. Now, I have a distributor in a neighboring town that can probably sell 1,000 pounds a week for me.

Two things surprised me when I started selling. One was the demand for green tomatoes and the other was the demand for #2 canning tomatoes. The people who can tomatoes almost always get 50 or more pounds.

I sell them too cheap here in town because so many friends and family like them and it's one way I can give back a little, plus it gives me the opportunity to hire "special" help from time to time.

I also found an inexpensive "tomato red" building that I'll be selling from next year.