Last year Hannah posted a video showing how she strung up her tomatoes rather than staking them and I thought it was a great idea. Since mine are planted in raised beds this year, I thought I'd give it a shot. 
First I took these big metal whatchamacallits that I found in my basement and nailed them to the corners of the raised beds.
Then I tied a stick to the top connecting the two whatchamacallits. I put one nail directly in front of each tomato plant 
to attach the string. After I placed the string in the proper locations and tied them to the nails, I pulled the tomato plants up and tied them to the string.
Right away the tomatoes were pulled up off the giant squash
and now more of them hang over the edge of the raised beds. This should help with the space problem.
Do you have a creative way to stake tomatoes? Be sure to tell me about it so I can put it on my list to try next year.
I'm using a combination of just plain bamboo stakes, a sort of trellis built from wire fencing, and tomato cages I've made out of the same fencing.
ReplyDeleteI've got curly-cue stakes, which I love, and traditional tomato cages.
ReplyDeleteThe non-traditional unit I have for cukes & pole beans is a home-made brass & wire diamond-shaped trellis that looked great in my head, but ended up looking more like a mattress springs.
You can see a photo of all three at: http://web.mac.com/charlierj/ArtOfGardening/Home/Entries/2008/6/13_Potager_progress.html
Whatchamacallits make the best garden supports! I always feel proud (and, admittedly, vaguely smug but I try to be subtle about it!) when I find uses for odd things around my house or garden shed!
ReplyDelete~ Monica
(I wandered over here from a link at MMD's)
Man, I really wanted to tie up my tomatoes like you and Hannah for this growing season... but somehow I ran out of time. So my next idea was to do the Florida Weave method that Steven over at Dirt Sun Rain showed last year (link from my blogroll--I can't remember his URL right now) but then I didn't get that started, either. (Yeah, I don't have the grape arbor done yet... add that to the Not Done List, too. *sigh*)
ReplyDeleteBut I do have the curly-cue stakes that Jim mentioned, which I am trying for the first time this year. I will let you know what I think about them after the year is gone. I'm guessing that they will be fine for the Cherokee Purple, Black Krim and such. But may not be great for the Oxhearts that can be a pound or so in side. And I didn't even try them for Romas--with all of those tomatoes on one branch, I can't imagine that the branches wouldn't break off under the weight if you only had a center support.
Good lord, I'm rambling even more than usual. Time for bed, goodnight! lol.