Staking Tomatoes, How?

[OldGuy43]

I've decided on Heinz Classic Heritage Tomatoes from Bonnie Plants. I'm starting small with 4 plants and plan on staking them.

Do I put the stakes in when I plant or wait until they get a little bigger? Last time I used those wire cage things, and found them to be a pain in the...

As always, any other hints and tips would be appreciated.

 

[so lucky]

I find that if I wait till they are a little bigger, I invariably wait too long, and end up with sprawling plants that are difficult to gather up and tie to the stake. So I vote for putting the support there now. I have used large wire (purchased) cages, then put 2 or 3 taller stakes laced through the cage wires. This keeps the flimsy cages from bending over with the weight of a big tomato plant. Also, if the stakes are taller than the cage top, you can use them to help contain the plant as it grows taller. Hope this makes sense. :/

 

[Ridgerunner]

Heinz Classic Heritage Tomatoes These are determinate. Thought Id look that up.

As always, there are a lot of different ways you can do this. Some people just let them flop on the ground. Productivity is usually not great. Insects or other critters have an easier time getting to the ones that develop touching the ground. The tomatoes touching the ground also are more likely to get disease or rot. Ill just mention this because people do it this way.

You can put a single stake in the ground and tie the tomato plant up to it. You have an engineering background. Think of this as a one dimensional line in space. This is the next least productive way. I consider those cages you mention to fall in this category.

You can build a trellis. Many different ways to do this. Think of this as a two dimensional plane. Again, productivity generally increases.

Or you can cage them. Again, many different ways to do this. This is the most productive. Think of it as three dimensional, giving the most space for the tomato plant to develop and produce.

Steve had a link a few years back that showed the relative productivity of these four different general methods.

To answer your specific question, you can install any of these when you set them out or wait a few weeks, until they start to grow.

Where determinate is important is that determinant tomatoes tend to not grow as big as indeterminates. I build a cage about 6 tall (two cattle panels spread out about 9" to 12" on each side of the row and with an additional cattle panel attached up high to get to 6' height). My indeterminates often climb over the top of that and grow all the way back to the ground. Determinates usually dont get to the top. This is general. Each variety is different. Its been a few years since I grew any determinates. All mine are now indeterminate.

Determinates tend to have a set number of tomatoes theyll produce and a lot tend to ripen about the same time. My determinates do continue to make a few tomatoes after their mad rush of producing a lot at one time but productivity does drop significantly.

Also you can prune indeterminates and not hurt productivity. They will just sucker out and keep growing. If you prune determinates, you cut into your productivity.

I find that if I use a trellis, I dont have enough room for my indeterminates to tie them to the two dimensional trellis and have to prune back some branches. There is just not enough physical space to tie them. On the indeterminates thats not a huge deal. Theyll just keep growing. On the determinates like yours, pruning would not be a good thing.

 

[OldGuy43]

Yeah, I'm considering adding a couple of indeterminate plants so that I'll have tomatoes over a longer period of time. How do you feel about Early Girl ?

 

[bj taylor]

last year I followed 'The Vegetable Book, A Texan's Guide to Gardening' by Dr. Sam Cotner (best vegetable book for Texas gardeners ever in my opinion). I grew my tomatoes in a raised bed. I had so many tomatoes I couldn't keep up. gave 'em away, froze a lot, ate a lot, the chickens ate a lot. I hope I can have some of that success this year.

while they're small I used 5 gal buckets cut in half & bottom cut off to sit over the plants to protect from cold/wind. as they get bigger, I remove bucket part & put wire cage made of concrete reinforcing wire big enough to make a 18 - 20" diameter & 5 feet tall. even this almost wasn't enough to hold them.

I used the Texas Pot method. a 1gal plant container or coffee can w/holes in the bottom & lip above ground level planted in the ground midway between each plant. once they start to set fruit apply 1 tbsp. ammonium sulfate or 3/4 tbsp. ammonium nitrate in the pot & fill w/water until no longer quickly drains. apply this every 7 - 14 days.

I followed this faithfully through the season & had a HUGE crop of tomatoes. that's how i'm doing it this year too. we'll see if I have the same success.

he points out that only certain tomatoes grow well in our climate & so I chose those known to perform here.

 

[ducks4you]

My MIL had the best method. She used one metal 4' high fencing stake for each tomato and constucted wire cages from 4' high cattle fencing. If you know anyone with unused cattle fencing--like me--see if you can buy it. I still have about 35 ft from a 100 ft. roll left. (New stallion fencing replaced our need to fix horse fences.) The holes are about 4" square and it's easy to pick the fruit.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ducks that reminds me of a mistake I made once, well one of my many mistakes. I used 2 x 4 fencing as a trellis. I grew Black Krim that year along with many other varieties. Black Krim tomatoes can get pretty big in diameter.

It seemed that almost every Black Krim decided to grow in the middle of one of those 2 x 4 holes. The other varieties werent as bad about doing that. But those Black Krim pretty much cut themselves into sections just growing in those holes. I had to cut them in half to pick them when they ripened.

Your 4x4 fencing would have been a lot better than the 2x4 I used. Thats when I switched to the cattle panels. Those holes are a lot bigger.

 

[majorcatfish]

there is a million ways to stake tomato's up.

over the years here stuck with wire hoop tomato cages and over that time have purchased good one's and have purchased some not so good one's. guess they call that a learning curve.....

would like to share what i have learned over the years using cages.

when you purchase a cage the legs are in it's fabrication/shipping position.
bear with me using a retired cage as a example..


carefully bent each leg out roughly to match the 2nd to the top ring.


insert cage over the tomato plant and firmly insert in the ground, nothing wrong giving tap with a hammer on each of the leg supports.


heres something learned after a strong wind storm. once cage is installed hammer a 4' piece of rebar<or what ever you have> along on one of the legs and tie them together in 2 places.
this will give the cage it's rigidness and withstand any strong wind.


as the tomato plant grows will insert a 6' sturdy stake into the cage and use surveyors flagging tape to hold up the branches.
it's very strong and very easy on the branches compared to using twine or rope.
only my preference but i like using yellow tape seams to attack more bees.


since we grow indeterminate type of tomato's all our new replacement cages are 56" to retire the older 46" cages that are showing their age....
size does matter....when growing a tomato.
hope this helps..mc

 

[hoodat]

I've posted before about what I call my Tinkertoy cages made from PVC pipe and fittings. The advantages are you can make them any size and at the end of the season they break down into their components and take very little storage space. Here is one in the early stage of use so you can see how it's put together. Just push the pipe into the fitting. No glue needed. You can just keep adding tiers as the plant grows or put two side by side if you want to let the tomato spread out.

 

[MontyJ]

I build an "A" frame for my tomatoes. It's tall enough to walk under and holds up to high winds and heavy plants. I used to use young Sumac trees, but the gas company cleared the right of way where I used to cut them, and now they are gone. I could find another stand, but those were convenient, being right across the road. Now I use 8' 2x2's bolted together at the top. They pivot at the bolt, so I can fold them up for storage.