Best way to cage tomatoes

[bills]

One summer travelling through Keremeos BC, I stopped by a huge u-pick tomato farm. Thousands of plants, and no staking whatsoever. Plants just sprawled out on the dirt. Plants looked healthy, and had great fruit production. You really had to watch where you walked..

 

[Carol Dee]

Ummm that pretty much looks like out tomatoes by the end of the season. Heavy plants, winds, etc... pretty soon all in heap. Very hard to pick as you are always stepping on plants and fruit! Lots of crickets, grasshoppers, tomato horn worm hiding places, too.

 

[ninnymary]

That's how they are grown commercially in California.

Mary

 

[seedcorn]

Pretty much how they are grown everywhere commercially. Can you imagine staking acres of tomatoes?

That also looks like my garden. Would like to finally improve on that look.

 

[Smart Red]

Oh, my! I don't think I'd like that look for a U-pick venture. Too many squashed tomatoes to my way of thinking.

 

[journey11]

I figure too, they mostly grow determinate varieties. One big pick, then done.

I've not seen them sprawling at the U-picks around here, all are Florida weave. Our climate is hot, humid and often very rainy in the summer. They'd all rot if they sprawled them here. I imagine the cost of labor and stakes for acres of tomatoes is pretty staggering though.

Home gardeners with lots of indeterminate plants would have a mess to walk through trying to pick.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I wish I could figure it out soon. I have the pole beans figured out, but tomatoes and I still have not planted peas yet because I cannot figure out what to do with them.

 

[Carol Dee]

@Gardening with Rabbits my in-laws always planted bush type peas in double rows. Said they held each other up. I thought they still fell over in a tangle. DH and I have been planting them along a wire cattle panel and letting them cling/climb on that.

 

[Beekissed]

Pretty much how they are grown everywhere commercially. Can you imagine staking acres of tomatoes?

That also looks like my garden. Would like to finally improve on that look.

Not in these parts...too humid and they are irrigated here. The stakes are placed via machine and migrant workers tie up the plants. Every single stake even with the next, neat as a pin over HUGE tomato farms that go on for acres and acres. The hilled up earth around the plants are covered with black plastic and the farms are irrigated from the OH river on both sides of the river.

 

[seedcorn]

@Beekissed post pix please. Something else to make me feel like slackard. Learned something.