Tomato staking
 

What's a good setup for staking tomatos?

My earthboxes just came in- going to set one up for indeterminates. Early Girl and some kind of Brandywine, probably. For a staking system I'm thinking two 2x2's cut to about 9' and sharpened... Pound them about a foot into the ground on either side of the box, then Florida weave the plants with heavy poly cord as they grow.

Anyone have some pics of systems that have worked for them? It's a little bit different gardening in containers, but it's much easier for my area.

Still at a loss as to what I should plant in the other one... Is it too late to put peas in?

gardening forum link
http://www.striped-bass.com/Stripert...ing-forum.html

no, not to late for peas at all
just build a pea fence and have it in place before you pre-soak your sugar snap pea seeds
(MY PREFERENCE) LET THEM SWELL TO DOUBLE SIZE
but not get mushy like for about 4-to six hours
v trench and sprinkle them in an inch apart.
water peas twice a day!tomatoes do well in cages
or you can stake them using rolls of plastic green
stretchy tape ...some has Velcro re-usable good stuff!
for tomato cage wire choose the type that has big enough square holes
that allow you to reach threw them to grab tomatoes
mine are 3 feet tall already and in flower

For tomatos I use 3/4 inch metal electrical conduit with two elbows to make a upside down U shape frame about six feet tall and five feet wide.
Cut two pieces of 1 inch conduit about 2 feet long and hammer them into the ground. The frame legs will slide right into them to hold it up.
Then I tie twine across the two vertical supports about six inches above the ground.
Then I tie twine from the top of the frame down to the twine at the bottom. I use one per plant so hang as many as you need.
As the tomatos grow just twist the plant around vertical pieces of twine.

I only grow heirlooms so may not work well for patio tomatos.
I hope that wasn't too confusing

10 foot electrical conduit - use a coupling to go to 20 feet :rotf2:

Holy Crap....how do you get your tomatoes so damn tall...I don't think I've ever seen plants get higher that 4-5 feet...those are impressive

Not impressive Dad - just don't know what I'm doing - I can grow the #^&#^&#^&#^& out of the plants but when it comes to fruit - not so much :smash:

Except the Super 100's - got a million cherry tomatoes - some of them were growing 15 feet in the air :jump:

I need to learn how to prune properly . . . those pictures were from a few years ago - I'm going with 8 foot wood 2x2's this year and I'm going to pay alot closer attention to them before they get out of control . . . either that or I'm going to take up golf . . . I just have a small area that I like to mess around with after work while sipping a cold beer.

I'm sure to have lot's of questions . . . it goes beyond just pruning out suckers . . . I think I need to use hedge trimmers :D

I use this system easy and works great

I find making cages out of the heavy wire mesh used in cement floors make great cages and last many many years. Can be bought at the big box stores. Mine are probably 15 years old.

No expert by any means but I've been reading up on tomatoes and they say if you apply a fertilizer high in phosphorous it promotes more fruit developing.....like I said....I'm no expert but try googling up some info on it.

Coffee grounds are supposed to be good for that as well
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one method i always do
when setting them out is to plant them much deeper
so they have a larger root system which
makes for a bigger plant later on

Raven has the right idea ,
You can lay down the plant with only a few inches above ground . Carefull bending the top up and out of the dirt
everything under ground will turn to root .
I toss in a little 10-10-10 and sit back ... Mine are always over 5-6 ft tall

A very old man told me this from Spags years ago, works fine :jump1:

Another thing i do is to take the suckers
and root them ...saves allot of time

i have pulled a good sized sucker, poked a hole
in the soil with my finger and shoved it in there
(mostly on rainy days is best )
and always next to its mother (plant)
and they root up in a week's time...

then you can transplant it out of there
if you want

What's a sucker?

sucker
 

Daddy-O pic

lol
 

p t barnum said

there's one born every day....

but to answer your question properly
in addition to VB's excellent illustration...

i save dark bottles or vitamin bottles
that are either dark brown or dark blue
which prevents light from discoloring the vitamins
while still on the shelf.....

that is where i'll put vitamin b1 water
because it increases root growth x 100 times
and stick the suckers in there to rapidly root
but....lack of light in the root zone
encourages them to root too.

One year I got some seeds for the Pompeii plant. San Marzano style giant fruit.

The plants were about 7 feet tall and 5 feet around. Had 14 of them. It would take me hours to sucker them.

Harvest was measured in bushels, it was crazy.
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tying up material
 

what do you like?

in the "old days"
we used old bed sheets torn into long strips

now-a-days we have fancy new stretch tape...
that "gives" as they grow

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c6...retchytape.png

Burpee has them if anyone's interested

San Marzano Organic Tomato Seeds and Plants, Vegetable Seeds at Burpee.com

I just visited c. N. Snith farm right around the corner from my house. In one of the hot houses they about 200 tomato plants in five ga.llon buckets. They had a reel system attached to each plant. The higher the plant grows the more the spring loaded reel retracts. Too expensive for us to use. My garden is all planted as of today
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i still have much to plant
especially carrots but i use pelleted seed only which is
much easier to place a few inches apart.

Are u supposed to put stakes in for peas?
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anything that grows tendrils that reach out and coils around anything it can latch onto requires a fence to climb

there are bush varieties that are self supporting

sugar snap peas grow 7 feet high if watered twice a day
and fertilized once a week

you can use two or three stakes and a half circle of fencing
instead of a long straight fence but they bear heavily and it weighs allot
if your doing it right

I'm not doing it right. Can I put fencing on just one side? Ill use chicken coop. Or should it be on both sides. I planted raised beds to have some fun with my son. I'm not looking to live off our crop or anything. But I noticed that the peas should be growing up. As of now they are healthy and growing quickly. I did a mix of loom and compost. Everything is green and growing great. So can I just give the peas one side to crawl up or do I need 2. I only have 1 row of peas that is in the middle of stuff that doesn't need to be supported
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YEAH throw one up along side the row
you can take some string and tie it to the wire and weave it through along the fence to force them closer all at once or individually hook the tendrils manually
they have a little hook at the end that will latch on ! and that tells them here's something to climb....

bingo.... makes them much more resistant to drought...and stronger, more bushy
I put mine in a trench tilled down deep and fill in as the plants get taller...

if you want alot of fruit...pinch those suckers...if you have too much greenery.. the plant puts all the effort into maintaining the leaves and less into producing fruit
One thing the old man used to tell me about pinching suckers.... he used to remind me all the time " fruit dont grow on the leaves son"

THANKS

So pinch where the leaves exit the stems
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i don't waste the resource myself
and prefer to root the suckers in dark jars
containing vitamin B1 and once rooted they go
into 4" pots for awhile.... i give them away ...
as they are special patio tomatoes, super early too
so therefore i use a razer knife