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[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

If you are worried about them on the ground, just lay something on the 
ground, or park a wheelbarrow or something...tomatoes, like all other 
vines, will find a way up and over...
I now have rebar cages, but started out with fence cages (holes 2x4 with 
a section cut out so I could reach my hand in and get big tomatoes out). 
 Anyway, I hate staking tomatoes, so what I do now is just stick 'rods' 
through the fence.  Ever play Kerplunk! when you were a kid?  You put 
the sticks through to support the marbles at the top.  In the garden, 
you put the sticks/rods/bamboo through the holes in the wire cage and it 
supports the vine/tomatoes.  You just alternate the direction of 
insertion of the sticks and apply them as you need them.  My tomatoes 
are already 6+ feet tall this year...and they are just now putting on 
tomatoes!  I also do this with my peppers..and you could even do it with 
cukes or any other loose vine.
I have probably mentioned this here before, but one year I took a few 
2x4 scraps, 1 foot long, and attached a piece of scrap red top field 
fencing to it.  I made a simple platform, like a fence bed or a little 
rectangular trampoline.  It was 1 foot or so tall, and the fence was 
about 4 feet wide(high if it were indeed a fence) and 6 feet long.
So anyway, I planted my tomatoes and set the platform over the top of 
two plants...sure enough, they vined over the top, and the fence helped 
support the toms and keep them high enough to avoid mud splashing.  If I 
had it to do over again, I'd make a much larger bed to accommodate a 
larger vine.

Gene GeRue wrote:
> On Jun 27, 2008, at 8:41 PM, Roy Morgan wrote:
>
> > My parents, who learned their garden ways in the 1930's and 40's,
> > pinched out all the "suckers" that sprouted between any other two
> > branches of the stem.
> >
> > Maybe it was a strongly held bad idea.
>
> Sounds like it. I've been doing it for decades. I have long pruned the  
> bottom eighteen inches, to help protect from disease caused by rain  
> splash from disease-bearing soil up to the leaves. In this year's  
> tomato patch I am not pruning at all and they are lying on the ground.  
> So far no disease in spite of excessive rainfall. That soil has a very  
> high percentage of grass/leaf mulch and that might be why.
>
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--
BevanRon of EarthNSky Farm   NW Georgia USDA Zone 7
34.498N 85.076W    Bev is Earth, Ron is Sky