New Tomato Trellising and Training System (Video)
What can be worse than rambling tomato vines and rotting fruits sprawling all over the garden? How about spending money on tomato cages and fancy supports that really are not up to the task of keeping your tomato vines upright, productive, and happy!
I’m trying a brand new tomato staking system in my garden this summer and here’s a video to help show how simple, easy, and inexpensive it can be to trellis tomatoes in your backyard garden:
Start with the tallest metal fence posts you can find, add a spool of 16 gauge wire, something to tie the tomato vines onto the wire, and there you have everything needed to train and trellis your heirloom tomatoes.
I’m using the tomato trellis clips from Johnny’s Seeds and while they are made of non-biodegradable plastic, they are reusable and can be used from one season to the next. There are also other applications such as training cucumber vines that will put these clips to good use.
Pruning your tomato vines and removing the sucker growth is an important part of the trellising process, but it takes very little effort if you are consistent about it. I have to thank and credit Leslie Zuck of Common Ground Farm for sharing this trellising system at last winter’s annual PASA Conference.
As with any growing method, you should plant your tomato transplants very deeply when setting them out in order to encourage strong root systems. Leslie also emphasized using a mulch around the tomato plants as part of this trellising system. That’s something I normally don’t do with my tomatoes but I’m following her advice and applied a straw mulch after transplanting.
I’ve just strung my third strand of wire along the row and this tomato trellis system is working out better than the cages ever did for me. Plus the wire can be reused over and over, and the t-posts will take up much less space in storage during the off-season.
I don’t think that I’ll be going back to using cages anytime soon! In fact, if anyone local is looking for a couple dozen used tomato cages, I know where you can find some.
Other Related Vegetable Gardening Posts:
July 10th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Trying to tame my tomatoes plants is something that I have struggled with forever. Like you said in the video, I have tried cages, stakes, a combination of both – nothing has ever really worked that great. But this system looks like a winner! I am definitely going to give it a try next season. Thank you for sharing it!
July 10th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
[...] you are interested in this great tomato trellising idea, please check out New Tomato Trellising and Training System (Video) from Veggie Gardening Tips. I think anyone that loves to grow tomatoes will appreciate this. Thanks for sharing this system, [...]
July 11th, 2009 at 6:56 am
Thanks for the great tips on trellising! This is been an odd growing season in our area this year. We’ve had unseasonably mild weather. My tomato plants are almost 6 feet tall and have outgrown my cages many weeks ago. I’ve added stakes but they’re outgrowing those too.
I sure wish I had seen your trellising system this spring. I’ll definitely keep it in mind for next year!
July 11th, 2009 at 8:10 am
The beauty of this is the simplicity! I’ve skipped tomatoes this year (blight two years in a row.. time to rest the beds!), but will probably get tomatoes going again next year and this is the trellis i’m going to use. This is also a FAR sturdier trellis than i built for my peas this season. I’ll be replacing those trellises with this one too. Thanks!
July 11th, 2009 at 10:04 am
[...] excellent instruction video on how to use a post and wire trellis system for your tomatoes from Veggie Gardening Tips. I have used this system in the past and it stands up very well to the weight of the tomatoes, even [...]
July 11th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
[...] http://www.veggiegardeningtips.com/new-tomato-trellising-and-training-system-video/ [...]
July 11th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I don’t like those short tomato cages either. Here is our solution. We bought a roll of something called construction wire. It is made to roll out to strengthen concrete. The roll already has a grid pattern and it is really strong. We made up round cages and have been using the same cages for 7 or 8 years now–they really last. About once a week we weave the tomato vines through the windows in the wire. This works really well for support. We no longer even need ties or clips. Making the cages takes a little work (wire clippers and then bending the wire to close the circle. But it works great and they last forever.
Judith
July 11th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Handy! I may try that next year.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Don’t ditch those wire cages just yet!
I too have a collection of hoop style wire cages that don’t work well w/ tomatoes. Being the cheap-skate that I am-I looked for other uses and found one.
Summer squash supports.
I found that my crookneck, straight neck and zucchini squashes grow very well (and tall) using these supports. The fruits are kept off the ground, they are easy to see and harvest plus the added benefit of being able to easily inspect the undersides of the leaves for squash bug eggs has reduced their numbers considerably.
July 13th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
In my dreams I have tomatoes that need any staking! Someday though I hope to again live somewhere warm enough to worry about this sort of thing. Right now that San Francisco fog is going to keep my tomatoes down… sigh.
Great video.
July 13th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Thanks for the compliments and for taking time out to watch the tomato trellising video. It’s still holding up well and supporting all of my tomato vines. One additional suggestion that I received was to use some type of brace on the end posts to keep them from being pulled in as the weight on the wires increases. I will keep an eye open and brace the post if needed but so far they are still straight and and all the tomato vines are very happy and finally starting to ripen fruits.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:28 am
This is a great idea, but I’m a single older woman that finds this type of physical labor difficult. So, here is what I found for trellising my tomato plants and any other vining plant or plant that requires support. Putting the stakes in the ground are easy and rather than having to run wires back and forth, this is much lighter than wire and easier to set up for us older folks. I buy all of my heirloom tomato plants and other veggies and flowers from Garden Harvest Supply. Here is the link for the trellising system: http://www.gardenharvestsupply.com/category/trellis-netting
Keep up the good work, you have a great site!
July 14th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Avid Gardener, thanks for stopping by and checking out the video. I actually think setting the stakes in the ground is the most physical part of this entire tomato trellising system and that it would be even easier than using the netting that you linked to. I place the wire one strand at a time as the tomato vines grow and there are no tangles like you can get with the wire. Also there is no way that I could ever get the netting to be as sturdy or as rigid as the wire, especially down an entire row of tomato plants.
July 28th, 2009 at 6:56 am
I used to do a lot of work in greenhouses growing tomatoes for an early season harvest to take to market. We did something similar to your method here. We used 10′ T-posts driven two feet into the ground. A post driver and a sturdy step ladder helped a lot. For the trellis we used a flat synthetic rope. It was like electric fencing without the conductors in it. It was tied off at one end of the row and woven back and forth between the plants. At the end it was tied off and brought back down the row weaving through the plants on the other side, trapping the plants between the rope. It is easier to see than to explain. It is a lot like finger weaving. The rope was good for several years and was easy to take down. This was good because as soon as the tomatoes were done the greenhouses had to be cleared out for drying racks.
August 1st, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Loved your tomato video. Trellising tomatoes is a wonderful idea, the cages really don’t work for heirloom varieties that seem to take over the garden. I’m definitely going to do this next spring! I’m growing my apple tree on a trellis, I don’t know why I didn’t think about growing tomatoes that way as well.
August 1st, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Thanks MRK, the tomato trellis is still holding up well and the some of the tomato vines have grown over six feet tall and reached the highest wire. Even then they can continue to grow along the wire. It looks like I have a tomato fence and is much more attractive than the usual jumbled mess of tomato vines. I should probably be pruning the tomatoes better than I have but this system is working great!
August 12th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Hi! I will be brief. My trellis system is… I use fence stakes or some other type of metal pipes to stick in the ground. For the horizontal lines I use the plastic pipes from the Home Depot which are used for the electric wiring. They are around $1 for an 8 foot pipe. The rest is easy to understand. These plastic pipes are light, easy to handle and even do not lose their color. You can keep them and reuse them forever. I use a rope from the dollar store which will be enough for several seasons and more. It is by the way natural, so enjoy. That is it, easy, cheap, and long lasting.
August 16th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
[...] plants that have gone out of control. I plan on using a trellis system like the one featured at Veggie Gardening Tips. Hopefully, it will make growing tomatoes a bit more [...]
August 29th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
I could not get the tomato trellising video to go for me..any ideas?
August 30th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
[...] still love the support system that I shared in my tomato trellising video, but there are so many great options and techniques for supporting your plants and they will all [...]
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Just one season of growing indeterminate tomatoes has shown me that I definitely needed a better way to support them. Just looking at the cages and little flimsy poles they make, I knew that wouldn’t work. I did use ten foot 1X1, but i didn’t have a good system of attaching the plant for support, so I still ended up with plants that went up and then went back down when I ran out of 1X1 (the 1X1 was about 2 foot in the ground so was about 8 foot high). The system that I want to try seems similar to the one on your video, but it’s a little different, and maybe not quite as expensive to do. The video was on Youtube and it shows commercial tomato growers’ version of trellising. What they do is place a stake between each tomato plant, so you have tomato plant, stake, tomato plant, stake. A good quality string is used to “weave” in and out of the plants and stakes. I found it while looking for videos on pruning, but it also shows their trellising system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eak7yj0tEvM Just curious is anyone has tried this before and how it turned out for them? Also, a couple notes on pulling suckers….by pulling suckers you will end up with larger fruit, but also fewer fruit. With determinate varieties of tomatoes, you start pulling suckers much later than with indeterminate varieties. One more thing…what do you think of the new UV light reflective plastic mulches? I had a problem with thrips and the tomato spotted virus they spread this year…so I’m thinking about incorporating all these things into my tomato gardening next year…raised beds, UV reflective mulch and the trellis system on that video. Any ideas?
October 10th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Thanks for the video Kenny, I think I am going to try a trellis system next year. I usually put el cheapo 7′ bamboo poles in the ground to support my plants, so of course the most you get to use is 6′ after you’ve sunk them in, and for some time now I’ve been trying to creatively fold the vines up and down the poles to keep the branches from breaking off (which frankly has happened several times). Another interesting version I saw somewhere, maybe at the Fine Gardening website, was to install a kind of skeleton gazebo around your tomato plot, and then run string or wire vertically from the top horizontal section, to the ground where the string is connected to short stakes in the ground. I think your system is a good bit simpler, and probably less expensive.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Thank you for another insighful post!