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  • From: <bill AT farmerbill.downhomecountry.info>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Tomato training
  • Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 16:10:03 +0200


rjweeks70 AT comcast.net wrote:
> I wanted to poll the list and see what sort of tomato training everyone
> does.

I get 15' cattle panels @ about $15 per panel and cut them into pieces
with bolt cutters, with 2 horizontal stays per piece. This gives about 8
15' pieces per panel @ roughly $2 apiece. I drive 5'-9' T-posts
depending on whether I'm trellising peas or indeterminate tomatoes/ pole
beans, with 3 posts per trellis and using the 2 end posts to support the
2 adjoining pieces. This gives a very stable trellis that should last
for my lifetime, easy to move and costing about 50 cents a foot first
year, free after that. The pieces store flat in a small area, although
mine wind up staying put until they're needed or in the way. We've had
15 loaded tomato plants hanging from one trellis with no sagging. I
either hang nylon netting from the stays for cucumbers, or run twine
between the stays and a bottom piece of twine for tomatoes/pole beans
and run the plants up the twine. You've got to prune the tomatoes until
midseason though. 3 miles of baler twine for $22 is cheap and stringing
it goes fast. Last year I tried double rows of tomatoes hanging from a
central trellis with 5' between trellises, T-tape until the rains
started, and using mulch for weed control. We got 17" of rain in central
Ohio in August/September, and we need to try it again. Double rows of
pole beans did great though. We had 500 tomato plants last year.

> What do you like about your method of training? What don't you like?

I like being able to reuse the trellises, multi-functional, no sagging,
tomatoes seem healthy with close spacings, easy to pick. Dislikes would
be time spent pruning and initial stringing up. I use these on my
blackberries and grapes as well.
--
Bill Huhman
South-Central Ohio




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