How to train your tomatoes

Train your tomatoes

Tomato. Every gardener grows them, and every gardener has strong ideas on "how you will grow tomatoes properly," especially how to control them. Also, to be honest, even control would not be a problem if the tomato plants were out of control. They spread out all over their neighbors' beds, clogging up the space and clinging to anything unfortunate enough to be planted nearby. Not only that, they tend to hide their fruits under leaves and on the ground, where rot, snails, and stray legs can cause their damage at harvest.

There is good news though. Since many tomato growers have many opinions on this matter, there is more than one way to keep your tomatoes in their place. Stocking, caching, trellising and inverted gardeners use vertical growth, and this article will help you determine which is the best way to train your tomatoes.

Developing pains

First, we will discuss the methods of growing tomatoes. Each tomato shows one of two growth habits: unstable or firm. Unstable tomatoes do not stop growing or producing tomatoes until they die. Heritage crops and the monster slicers that everyone loves are generally uncertain. Sturdy tomatoes are stocky and very compact, and they all bear fruit at the same time. Most hybrids and commercial cultivars are determined. If you plan to make a lot of sauce or canned tomatoes, the determined varieties are for you.

Without any restraint, your tomato plant will grow more than it can sustain itself. For some crops like pumpkin or watermelon, it doesn’t matter much. However, for tomatoes, the spread is a major source of headaches, which can lead to diseases, pest damage, and crop loss during harvest.

Most tomato diseases live in the soil, so it is important to keep the plants in the ground. Many creatures that like to eat ripe tomatoes like snails, snails, and tomato worms prefer to hang on the ground level. For those who like to wander for hours on the leaves and branches to find ripe tomatoes - stick your thumb in half-eaten fermented porridge, or step on the ripe beauty, or remove a dozen whole branches. Green tomatoes?

Providing good ventilation and avoiding soil spraying during rain and irrigation goes a long way in growing healthy, productive vines. The best solution is to cover the plant with aerial and ground with other plants or with some kind of organic mulch such as straw or leaves. Commercial growers prefer plastic sheets, but it can adversely affect soil biology, causing the soil to suffocate, leaving glue, moisture, and acid. If you do not need to bend in half to see the ground foliage, it is much easier to hunt for tomato hornworms that snack on tomato leaves. Some pests, such as chipmunks and squirrels, are not gradual with tomato training. To control them, there is the family dog.

Create a tomato cage

Welded wire cones, found in hardware and large box stores every spring, are near the tomato transplant, with three or four-wire legs at the small end of the cone. Each child should place one on the tomato plant and push the stem into the soil to support it as the plant grows. They work really well - to support the pepper plants. As for the tomatoes, they are very fragile. Other heavier cages are available, but they are much smaller than a healthy tomato vine.

It is good to make your own cages. An ideal cage is a hardwire cylinder 18 to 24 inches in diameter and 3 to 4 feet high. The mesh size is key to success; Choose wire panels with at least 6-inch square openings or you won’t be able to get those big, beautiful beefsteak tomatoes out of the cage. Concrete reinforcement panels, stack panels, and woven wire fences can all be made into effective cages as long as they are flexible enough to be rolled into a cylinder. To simplify the math, the 6-foot panel is rolled into a 2-foot-diameter cylinder. Join the ends together, center it on your tomato plant, and anchor it with some sharp "Y" sticks or tent stock.

Responds better to the cage than unstable tomatoes. Pruning is usually minimal, although the false branches occasionally protrude rum must be turned into a cage or pinched. The airflow around the caged tomatoes is good, but still somewhat restricted compared to other methods, especially if you keep several cages close. Plan a comfortable workspace on all sides of the cage. At the end of the season, pull out the cages, remove the dead flags, open the cylinders and store them flat or stack them in the corner outside the season.

Stack Your Sprouts

The next tomato-training method is the traditional role. The idea is very simple: drive 7-foot stakes in the ground to a depth of at least 1 foot and plant a tomato at its base. When the tomato grows, tie the main head to the stock. Here it becomes controversial: many gardeners wipe out “sucking” side branches to retain a single head. Meanwhile, many gardeners claim that soaking absorbs you, reducing the plant's solar storage capacity and restricting the ability of sugars in its ripening fruit. But one thing is for sure. Failure to absorb the vine can lead to uncontrolled complications of the lateral branches and breakage in severe danger.

Sucker or not, pick a good, firm stock to support your tomatoes. If they are wood, use stakes that are at least 1 inch thick. Metal fence posts, while not pretty, provide excellent support, and if there are knots, hooks, or handles for attaching electrical wire insulators, they provide excellent connection points for tying heads as the plant grows. From corkscrew patterns to "tomato ladders" there are some pretty fancy tomato stocks on the market. Avoid bamboo sticks; They are very flexible and difficult to bond.

Use soft materials to tie the flags, such as striped T-shirt materials, old nylon stockings, or hemp rope. To allow for growth, tie the flags loosely with a curved figure-8 catapult. Proceed with more caution because tomato vines can break easily if manipulated. Stocking works well with unstable flags and provides better ventilation. This makes it easier to find ripe fruit. It requires extensive pruning throughout the season, and this reduces the production of individual vines. One way to increase productivity is to allow each lateral branch to form a flower cluster before re-pinching. Those sides may need extra support.

Trellising tomatoes

Trellis takes up more space than stockings but flags are less likely to slip under their own weight. A truss is as simple as pushing two heavy 8-foot pillars into the ground, while the third post stands across their apex or is as wide as an A-frame with 2x4s. Old pipe-frame swingsets can be converted into the trellis. Heavy saplings A-frames add an attractive, rustic touch to the garden and can be obtained for free if you have access to a trunk. Sure, a vegetable garden is worth it, but no one says it can't be visually pleasing all at once!

Plant the tomatoes at 2 feet intervals below the top bar of the tray beaten horizontally. At the base of each tomato plant, a rope is tied to the top of the tray which is beaten horizontally. To create tension, anchor the end of the rope next to the plants to the ground, or, in a two-post trellis, tie it with another piece of rope that extends horizontally from foot to toe, just above the ground.

When the tomato plants grow, rotate the heads around the rope, and beyond the first flower clusters on the sucking side branches. If the growth of the plants is away from you - do not worry, it will happen to all of us - you can tie an extra rope to the top bar and train additional heads in the same style. This reduces ventilation, however, so do everything you can to trim throughout the season.

Florida Weave is a simple, fast trellising method developed specifically for tomatoes grown in commercial fields, but you can not use it in your own garden. Drive a solid 5- or 6-foot stake to the ground at the end of a row. Plant two tomato plants in a row, followed by a space of 2 feet between each plant and another. Repeat the process of one share between every two plants, whichever happens first, until the row or plants are exhausted. Do not forget to allow space for the final stock in the queue.

Tie the rope to the first post, about 6 inches above the ground. Extend the rope to the second post and wrap it around the post at the same 6-inch height. Continue your path until the end of the row, then loop your path to the opposite side of the beginning. When you are done, each tomato plant will have a 6-inch-tall upright rope. As the plants grow throughout the season, add more than every 6 inches of rope to create a web or support braid. Cecil bowling rope works well; Buy or Spool a Spool from a Farm Supply Store Ucycline twine stored from straw or hay.

This method is suitable for fields with strong tomatoes. It is fast and convenient and customized to work in queues. Try to grow unstable crops with this method, but be prepared to prune and weave back the branches in a row. If you have high productivity in mind, this is the method for you. Use resistant hybrids or grafted crops for high-density plantings.