As to your original question, yes, if you want to do all the required pruning then growing tomato plants up a string (regardless of the wire used to hold the strings) is a fairly common method. All that pruning to a single stem costs you production of course but some prefer the ease of access and appearance over production. As for planting things underneath the plants - that all depends on the tomato plant spacing you use. Often string growers use that method so they can plant more plants in a confined space, often as close as 16-18" apart. Consequently there isn't room to plant anything under the plants. If you are going to use 3-4' spacing then there would be room for inter-planting but keep in mind the different nutrient and water needs of many of the plants you list. Anything you plant in between will be competing with the tomatoes for sunlight, water and nutrients - when those needs are so different neither crop does well. Best results is to have a tomato area and a separate areas for each of the other crops. That way you can deal with each crop's individual nutrient and water needs, planting times, harvesting times, and needed sun exposure. Dave

I am planting for quality and taste first then growth. I will have 3 boxes with a combination of two in a box. It will be Parks Nectar, Sungold and Sweet Baby Girl. I am considering elevating the boxes. I also have a box with two Sweet Millions and a pot with one Napa Grape. It's too cold to mess around outside right now so will wait a couple of days till it warms up to do some measuring and planning. I've grown tomatoes at various times but never knew much about it except to stick them in the ground. Several years ago I planted tomatoes in a neighbor ladies garden and kept them well watered and I think she kept them fed. I buried a large fish in between two rows and the tomato plant next to it got over 10 ft tall. All my tomatoes were good but that one was quite a bit taller that the rest. I have no idea what variety they were but not knowing any better I thought that was the norm. I have a picture standing on a step ladder measuring the plant and a picture of her and I holding very large tomatoes. Doing a lot of research on the web. It's a learning process as you have to learn a certain amount so that you can begin to weed out the nonsense. That applies to all subjects. I have also gotten interested in flowers this year and I had some left over Geraniums so I decided I would harvest as many starts from them as possible. 40 so far. I thought it was very easy to start Geraniums but I would check on the web for advice anyway. It was actually comical the advice people were giving. I used a root starter on all clippings and put some in water, some in pots and some stuck in potatoes that I stuck in pots. I ran across a video done by a large production green house where one person might do 4000 plants a day. They simply cut a start, stripped all the leaves but one on top, dipped it in root starter and stuck them in seed starting trays. Nothing serious in my life-just enjoying my last childhood. LOL This post was edited by growmor on Wed, Apr 30, 14 at 11:44

The farmer's wife is market master and she called me about my insurance certificate, I asked about baling twine and they said it should last 1 season here outside. Didn't get started today, so will do it tomorrow AM (probably take me 3 AMs to get all the plants out, over 100 tomatoes and peppers). Then have to plant the seeds for other stuff - going to be a busy week! Off to TSC to get grounding rods for electric fence and check out baling twine (I don't know if I should ask my dad to take 800ft+ out of the baler when he still has 2 more fields to hay this month - might get 3 cuttings this year). I'm going with the natural instead of the poly since whatever I don't use, we can use in the baler later. Thanks for the link - I knew about no suckering above the top blossoms, but didn't know to look for a sucker *with* blossoms and main stem w/o them! I have already suckered (and taken blossoms off) the largest plants, hope I didn't do that by mistake - or sucker a det type (I don't know what my cousin gave me, but we'll see).

It'll be a reading project for over the winter... Right now I'm obsessed with trying to get whatever perennials in that I can transplant at this time and figure out what needs to be cut down in this season. As for my tomatoes, they're an embarrassment compared to anyone else's definition of "successful tomatoes", so I don't think I'll be sharing a picture. I define success by the fact that I've managed to get some fruit off the plants. Enough for my daughter to have a fresh snack every time we go in the yard together. She eats them right off the plant as soon as they ripen. Precious few of them have made their way into the house and into the adults mouths!