Regarding the "pants on the ground" problem I can comment as follows: I must confess,indeed,it has happened to me on one or two occasions. Both occured when using thinwall conduit the electrician left behind when wiring our house. So, I stopped using slick stakes. The stakes I use are ripped on my table saw from 2 x 4's down to 2 x 2's. I cut off a foot from the worst end of the 2 x 4 x 8's before ripping to yield a 7 ft finished stake. The rough edge of the rip cut, plus using strips of torn rag (as from an old sheet) provide plenty of friction to hold the plants up. Actually, I think the torn rag strips are the biggest contributor to holding things up. I haven't done the "pants on the ground" trick for as far back as I can recall. Archerb, you need not trim so severely to a single leader. You can get greater yields of nicely shaped tomatoes by doing double or triple leaders and then thinning away any misshapen/incorrectly pollinated fruits before they sap the strength from the plant. I usually start allowing suckers to develop into secondary and then tertiary leaders starting at twelve or so inches above the soil, then a space of a branch or two to go to #3. Takes a sharp eye to keep up, but eventually you'll get the hang of it. Also, you'll discover how to treat different varieties through experimentation. For example, Black Plum is one of my favorites for snacking. I find I can just about allow those critters to run up to 6 or 8 leaders and every leader will still yield big! The problem becomes keeping up with the tieing and shaping where you finally end up "hanging" rather than tieing back to the stake several of the many leaders. So far as stake length out of the ground, here in zone 6 I find 6 ft to be ok. If they get so lush as to want more I just screw on an addition with my battery powered drill and a piece of 1/2 x 2 by maybe 30" long. Comes off easy for next years use too. Larry

Alamo5000, I like majac777's idea which is a variation of your idea. The one trouble with trying to lift the panels after the tomato plants are already growing in them besides being awkward to do would be that a lot of the branches would get broken. My idea would be a variation of both of your ideas. Instead of using posts I would use 8x8x16 inch cement blocks stood on end to raise the concrete reinforcing mesh 16 inches above the ground. Let the tomatoes grow up to it and then just let them sprawl on top of the mat 16 inches above the ground. You would have the ease and higher production of sprawling tomatoes without the rot and insect damage you get if tomatoes touch the ground. At the end of the season just roll the mesh up and stack the cement blocks in the corner.

Yes, just put a foot of wood chip mulch down. The water and fertilizer from the tomatoes will help it breakdown. You don't need more than a foot but if you mix in a good amount "green" stuff (green in compost lingo just means stuff with a lot of nitrogen like grass clippings or manure. brown is carbon rich stuff like wood chips and leaves) your 12 inches will quickly become 4 inches because it's basically a compost pile. But a separate proper compost pile would be better. I would lay down 12 inches of mulch and put your tomatoes on it. Then I would take the manure you have access to and grass clippings etc and mix that with the rest of the mulch to make a proper compost pile that is greater than 3 foot by 3 foot. Place the compost pile in the area where you might expand the garden. The soil under that will be improved as well. Then you'll have two good spots and a bunch of organic matter when you start your garden next year.

OK, I promised some pics once my patch got a bit more established. Plants are doing well after a rough start a month ago. A lot of them are reaching 3 feet now. I've had to stake just about all of them because they're getting a bit unwieldy. Wide angle views of the developing forest. As you can see, there's a tape fence, which kept the deer out pretty well, until a couple nights ago, when one got in and chomped on a few plants. Since then I added a second perimeter fence made with 3 levels of fishing line. I figured the deer would try to get thru, but when they encountered some resistance they couldn't see, then that would disturb them enough to avoid the patch. We'll see how it goes. It's like I have to build a high security prison to keep the tomatoes in and the deer out! A shot of the rows of the plants. I spaced them out at 4 foot intervals. There are 10 rows of 7 for the tomatoes, and there are a couple rows of various pepper plants on the back side. As you can see they are staked, some already have a couple because the plants developed in a V pattern of two main stalks. Those red cups are the cups the seedlings went into after outgrowing their peat pods indoors under the grow lights. I wrote the variety on the cup to identify it. I also have the patch mapped out on a speadsheet. I'm such a geek. A Watermelon beefsteak in the foreground and Aunt Ruby German Green in the back. Both plants have some huge leaves, the Watermelon has potato leaves. A Japanese Black Trifele, again with tater leaves Cherokee Purple Lemon Oxheart in fore, Pink Brandywine behind San Marzano Yellow Brandywine A Tomatillo plant, I've never seen one before. Very interesting plant, it's like a cross between a pepper and 'mater. OK, that's prob enough for now. As you can see I need to do a bit more weeding/hoeing, but it actually looks cleaner after I did some yesterday.