It isn't a question of variety but of type - determinate vs. indeterminate.

Most any of the determinate varieties will work if sprawling appeals to you. They are the shorter, smaller plants vs. indeterminates and so likely what your parents were growing.

This is not to say that you can't sprawl indeterminates if you wish. But since they are vining types it is much more difficult to do and takes up much more room.

Dave

PS: Please note I am not encouraging sprawl growing. I find it to full of problems and IMO wastes both garden space and fruit. But it is your choice of course.

Here is a link that might be useful: FAQ - Determinate vs. Indeterminate

Thanks very much Dave. I have searched and read about sprawl growing. I do not have a problem with space, I have plenty. Wasted fruit is no problem and almost no cost because I grow from seed and transplant. I can just plant a few more. I have already caged for this year. Next year I am going to let at least a few sprawl. That link is useful to determine the ones that grow large plants. I'll try a few of both next year.

I see Dave doesn't encourage growing tomatoes by Sprawling, but I've grown well over 2000 different varieties, which means many thousands of plants over the years, by sprawling and all has been well. ( smile)

I grew both indeterminates and determinaes by sprawling.

All of the commercial famers in my area also grow all of their tomatoes by Sprawling but most of them are compact determinates.

It depends on how much space you have to work with as well as what critter problems you might have.

Some fruits may make contact with the soil and there can be some rotting but most of the fruits nestle in the foliage above the soil.

I used to put the plants 3-4 apart within the row and 5 ft between rows and the rows were 250 ft long and I usually had 8 to 10 of those rows each season.

So, an affadavit here from someone who has grown one heck of a lot of tomatoes by sprawling. ( smile)

Carolyn

This is very interesting. I might let a volunteer bush sprawl this year, but of course most of mine sprawl anyway by the time they get done collapsing those cheap tomato cages I use!

Sorry Carolyn - been there, done that, and got the rotten tomato T-shirt complete with slug holes to prove it. :-)

Dave

Dave - "it is much more difficult"

How so? I thought sprawling was the easiest way to grow them...you plant them and let them grow naturally. Of course many will get rotten tomatoes but some (like Carolyn) have had good experiences. I prefer to stake or cage myself though.

When I was a child, 60 plus years ago, my father raised tomatoes for a canning factory. Sprawling was the only way he knew to raise tomatoes. The varieties he grew were Marglobe and Rutgers.

Commercial farming/growing is not like home gardening. They cannot afford to
baby every single plant and talk to them everyday.(grin).
For most urban gardeners, space comes ar a premium. Just consider
square foot gardening method. Why do they buils buildings 10, 20, 30, ..100 stories high?.

I have heard this that in some parts of INDIA farmers make mounds to increase the surface area. They can almost double the space. Wow.

ldj: There are a few cherry tomato types that are bush types & aren't meant to be caged. I forget the name of them, but you could probably find them with a Google search for "cherry tomato no cage" or something like that. Also, there's one regular slicing tomato type called something like Mountain Magic, I believe, that's not supposed to need a cage.

- Steve

I've been debating between this or Florida Weave. I may sprawl some and weave some just to see. (I'll be weighing my produce this year, so I could do a fun comparison with the kids.

I'm too paranoid about SNAKES and other creepy-crawlies where I live to let them sprawl!

Generally tomatoes that don't take a lot of time to ripen like cherry tomatoes are good for sprawling. The really big ones that take forever to ripen will generally suffer insect or disease damage and rot before they ripen if you let them sprawl. Also cherry tomato plants are so prolific that even if a third your tomatoes were ruined you will still have more than you can use or get sick and tired of picking.

alifornian, that's a pretty general comment you made that mid to long season varieties can suffer, or did you say do suffer from insect or disease damage.

First, diseases don't care if a plant is being grown sprawled or caged or staked or whatever. They're equal opporunity pathogens. The foliage pathogens cause diseases of the foliage and the systemic diseases infect thru the roots, and both sprawled and caged plants have leaves and roots.(Wink). And systemic diseases are not found in all parts of the country, they are regionalized, so what works for one may not work for another , but again, regardless of how a plant is grown, if a pathogen is there it can infect.

Second, there have been those years that I've grown the same variety by both sprawling and caging, most recently since I moed to this new location in 1999. Yes, I've got the scars to prove I made my own cages. LOL And I don't see a heck of a lot of difference with the same variety being grown both ways.

it's so easy for one person to say don't do it, b'c, and other to say hey it works for me.

Diseases and citters are different in different parts of the country and I think it's good to try different methods, as I have and then make up your mind about what might be best for you.

And if you have the plants and space it's always good to do direct comparisons with two plants of the same variety, one sprawled, one not.

So experiment with how you grow your tomatoes and find out what is best for you in your area, with your weather and with the critters and diseases known to be in your area.

Carolyn

Carolyn,

Did/do you find any difference between sprawling on bare soil versus sprawling on, say, plastic mulch?

Also, in my experience, sprawled tomatoes produce much more than caged or staked tomatoes; enough to somewhat make up for the loss due to critters. What has your experience been in this regard?

Cheers.

I have to side with digdirt on the sprawling question last year I tried it and lost so many tomatoes BUT last year was a bummer year here in the northeast for tomatoes so I can't say it was all because of that. I do know that the critters thanked me for making it easier for them to obtain food so this year we're investing in cattle panels to grow tomatoes up. Cattle panels cost less than the Texas Tomato Cages which would have been my first choice and look like they'll last for years. Another consideration is space. Our garden is 8 raised beds 4 x 16 and we need to plant so that tomatoes aren't using all the garden real estate.

I'm in with Dave and the others who are against sprawling. I'm guessing 70% of my tomatoes were unusable when I tried sprawling. This compares to maybe 10% when caged and mulched well. Disease, various rodents, slugs, snails, pillbugs and various maggots are all added problems with sprawling. For those with limited space or limited plants and each one is precious I advise against it.

Did/do you find any difference between sprawling on bare soil versus sprawling on, say, plastic mulch?

*****

Whenever I sprawled my plants that was done on bare soil, never with plastic or any other kind of mulch. For all the years I did that I was growing several hundreds of plants and varieties and mulch was not a part of the picture.

******
Also, in my experience, sprawled tomatoes produce much more than caged or staked tomatoes; enough to somewhat make up for the loss due to critters. What has your experience been in this regard?

*****

Certainly more than staked tomatoes which I think produce the least for everyone since the plants are usually pruned to just two stems. But since I never counted or weighed fruits to get an exact amount to compare between caged and sprawled plants of the same variety I can only tell you that by eyeballing the situation they appeared to be about the same.

****

many of you are mentioneding critter problems that I've never had to deal with, so as I said above, know what is and isn't possible.

A few fruits on each sprawled plant might touch the ground, but very few b'c as I said above most of the fruits nestle in the foliage above the soil. Of those that touch the ground not all rot, either, as in maggots invading, etc.

The main critter problems I've had depended on where I was growing my tomatoes at the time.

When I was growing at the old family farm the only problems I had were with some bites out of a few early fruits, could have been mice or maybe even skunks or raccoons, no rats were ever around and no deer.And then Colorado Potato Beetles on the foliage and occasionally some gnats on the folliage that jumped over from the eggplants.

But when I moved to this new location in 1999 then the deer were a problem at one location and at another location up here I had stinkbug problems as well but not every year. In that same large garden which belonged to a friend, there were no critter problems b'c it had a 9 ft fence around it.

Never slugs, never pillbugs, some of you are mentioning stuff I never had problems with.

So I reapeat again, if space is not a consideration and your local critter problems are not a major problem, then letting plants sprawl is a reasonable growing method to consider.

Since I fell in Dec of 2004 and have been and am in a walker, I'm down to a maximum of 30 plants each year grown here at home in the backyard in 12 gal growbags and ALL my gardening is done by someone else, that means all the tomatoes, the containers with other stuff like cukes, lettuce, radishes, early turnips, a melon or two, some summer squash, carrots, etc. As well as all of my perennials including many roses, daylilies and on and on and on, b'c fragrant perennials are my faves.

I have 30 acres here but 10 of those acres are open fields leased to a local dairly farmer, then there's a lovely one acre marsh and the water from there comes past the deck and cascades over a 30 ft waterfall. The rest of the acreage is in woods and it's only the acre around the house that's open enough for lawn, flower beds and shrubs, b'c this place is a rock pile. LOL They had to dynamite to situate my home where it is next to the brook and waterfall. LOL

Bottom line? Just b'c some folks have had a bad experience sprawling plants that doesn't mean that everyone will. You have to assess your own situation as to space and possible critters, etc.

Carolyn

I am pretty late to this conversation, but just wanted to chime in anyway. I have tried pruning and twining, and caging. As has been mentioned, the flimsy 3-4 foot tall store bought cages don't work if you have healthy indeterminate plants and a long growing season. My plants are now growing out of the top of an eight foot re-mesh cage and and draping 4 feet down the outside of them.

I find caging to be better than staking for me personally, just because I am lazy and less work is involved. I have gotten good production with less plants and less work this way. In the heat of a Houston summer, pruning is not fun and is hard to keep up with! Space is not at a premium here, so I do not need to cram in a lot of pruned plants.

I have been thinking about sprawling them because they will put down roots wherever they touch the soil and will make for a stronger plant with more nutrient uptake. While my caged vines are at least 10-12 feet long the bottom six feet are just bare vines with all the growth at the ends. If they were not caged, these vines could be producing roots to support the upper growth.

I talked with my father about the subject and he said that when he used to grow a lot of tomatoes, he let them sprawl. He planted them in rows with black plastic mulch and whenever he noticed a vine touching the plastic he would cut a slit in the plastic to allow it to root. He got huge crops of tomatoes with minimal work this way.

I have also read of a method where one uses a low overhead support line and prunes the plants to one vine. As the early fruit is harvested the vine, supported from overhead is lowered and the lower part of the stem is buried to allow it to form roots. The late season result is a one stemmed tomato plant with a 2-3 foot vine (and hopefully several sets of nice fruit) above the ground and 8-10 feet of root mass (growing horizontally) supporting those three feet of plant.

Basically one ends up with a plant that is growing from the “end” of a long "trench” of roots. While I have not tried this method myself (since it is very labor AND space intensive) I have no doubt it would work well. I think allowing the sprawl and the extra rooting it allows should work pretty well. It will make spotting pests harder for me and feasting easier for them, but I am definitely going to try it next time.

I am all for easy. I know how bad I am at getting out there sometimes, so the more they can fend for themselves the better. Not forcing them to do things that are against their nature makes much sense too.

They "want" to sprawl and I'm lazy, so why not try letting them do what they want to do, while I take it easy and enjoy the fruits of my "labor"?

This year I had a 12 inch Tumbling Tom nibbled down to 6 inches by a deer in May. I let it sprawl and it ended up producing probably a thousand 1 inch tomatoes that tasted very good and it was 16 feet in diameter. I tried it last year in a pot and it worked well that way too.
Almost all the Tumbling Tom tomatoes were perfect even if they were pressed into the dirt. My sprawling Black Plum had a lot more pest activity when the fruit touched the ground. More than half of those were ruined I think because they matured much slower.
After August it became hard to find a place to put my feet when I picked. It gave my legs a good workout and I actually looked forward to it. Next year I'm letting a few plants sprawl again, but not too many since my legs won't have that much stamina. It would be easier to crouch and pick a few big tomatoes than crouching for a thousand cherry tomatoes.
I'm in Berkeley by the way which was rarely over 70 degrees for most of this season and my other varieties produced hardly anything.

My property came with plastic covered with landscaping rock. I've grown tomatoes in that, and there was never any rot or bug problem. The tomatoes never touch dirt. So growing on plastic should work well.

This year I had my tomatoes sprawling on dirt. The only rot was in a raised bed with a lot of organic matter. Not many tomatoes had any rot and none did until it got cold outside.

Not many of the tomatoes actually touch the ground.

I have nothing against cages and hope to try that next year.

Good discussion, one I'm glad got bumped back toward the top.

Next year, I'm doing something I have never tried before. It's part demonstration (converting an urban Brownfield into a Community Sustained Agricultural site) and part commercial. I'll have room for about 20 rows, each 270 feet long, of tomatoes. Staking and caging are completely out of the question, due to the initial cost. I thought about the Florida Weave but that would still involve one huge amount of stakes and string over the course of a growing season. What may (or sounds to me at this point!) make sense is a very hybrid approach. Till just the ground where the tomato plants will be growing, not the space between the rows. Instead of weaving every 4-6 feet, do one every ten-twelve feet and only add one, at most two rows of string. This would allow the plants to sprawl to a point, but yet keep the fruits off the ground. And what do end up on the ground will be on weed-eater trimmed sod instead of dirt.

Another advantage of this is that I may be able to add another row. The east side of the ground slopes significantly, so if I can leave soil between the rows I won't have to worry about erosion. That would give me another 270 linear feet of ground where I can raise onions, basil or such.

Any of this make sense?

Mike

First of all, very informative thread... glad i stumbled across it. I would be all for allowing my plants to sprawl (it is what they want to do), but my biggest sticking point would lack of air circulation. It may have worked like a charm this year here in the NE, however, those cool, wet summers the past few years may have been tough. Not a huge one for spraying, i think i would end up with some fungal issues... Late blight was awful a few summers back and the air flow that cages allow may have been all that saved what crop I was able to save.
Wordwiz: Sounds like a great project you got goin there. I think your modified weave would work great spilling down that bank, but I wonder how it would do in an open row application. I don't know what varieties you plan to plant, but maybe you could go with something determinate and compact. As far as fruits eventually sitting on the ground; coming to rest in the grass has got to be better than bare dirt. Good luck keeping it managed though, don't want to be weedwackin too much of your crop.

How much water is to much for Roma Tomatoes?

Here is a link that might be useful: Jumping Stilts

Sprawling the only way to go.

I maybe had 2 bad tomatoes out of 100 plants this past year. No sickness of the plants. everything very healthy.

Been doing sprawling for 40 years. But everyone laughs at me and says it does not work.

Those who have fruit loss are growing wrong. It is not the sprawling. It is something else they are doing wrong.

Personally,

Slugs were all over anything near the ground. At least the fruit off the ground had a chance.

I've let Romas sprawl but lost many fruit to rot, etc. where they touched the ground. Maybe the hot, humid conditions here in SC were part of the problem. I had better luck when I tried the following: I waited until the tomatoes began to lean over and sprawl (at about 2 feet tall) and then placed spare 1-gal black pots (I've got hundreds of them) around the plant. I put the pots where the plant needed support. The end result was a plant that sprawled on the tops of the pots. Some of the trusses of fruit hung down into the pots. I believe I reduced the loss of fruit to rot doing this. It worked in my small patch of plants, but it may not be practical for large operations. All that said, this past summer I staked the Romas with bamboo and enjoyed a much larger crop of fruit. (My wife thought the plastic pots looked ugly, and the bamboo method looked much better.) Tom

Celebrity bush and bush early girl would be good ones to let sprawl. Rosalita pink grape, husky cherry, siberia, mountain series tomatoes, would all be good to sprawl without getting too out of control.

I think the practicality of sprawling not only depends on variety selected and the area available to handle the situation but also how grass and weeds thrive or struggle in the area and climate where one is gardening.

Even though I grow on plastic and stake my plants I have to use Preen around the plant bases, or mulch with newspaper and whatever to avoid weeds and grass that would otherwise make everything into a mess.

Weeds and wild grasses will take over a garden area or a field left in fallow around here. Carolyn, were I try to use your row technique my tomato plants would soon be dwarfed by the weeds, lost among them and strangled by the grass! Even hay fields around here periodically have to be
replowed, hit with a strong dose of herbicide to knock off the broadleaf weeds, and replanted with orchard grass, red clover, and alfalfa mix. If you just use the broadleaf herbicide and don't plow and replant after a few years you just have orchard grass mixed with various resistant weeds
and that doesn't make a very rich hay. True enough, however, a lot of them do just that, kind of taking what they can get.

Last year I did 48 plants in two small gardens, closely spaced in rows 36" apart. Was absolutely buried in tomatoes! If I was only going to grow maybe 8 to a dozen plants I would think about letting them sprawl and I think I might get more pounds of tomatoes off the sprawling plants-but not so big and regularly shaped as I could not
do a real good job of finding and culling away the irregular
shaped fruits before they gobbled up a bunch of the available nutrients.
When I lived out in the Kansas City area I did let some plants sprawl as I had the room for it and the weeds and grass didn't grow as fast there. And the yield was quite satisfactory.

For those with not a lot of space who would like to try sprawling I can recommend Bush Italian Roma from Botanical Interest and Seed Savers' Siberian OG. I had both in a 3x4 bed and they produced one gazillion fruit. The roma promises 200. The Siberian are very early and they were both producing until mid-October.

However, they are small (romas 2.5", Siberian golf ball) and, at the height of tomato season, they aren't all that tasty fresh. In February, they are fabulous. I roast the romas in a mix with others and this year dehydrated them (snacking on them as I type). The Siberian I eat until the other tomatoes start coming in and then freeze them whole (well, squashed in freezer bags).

I had very little predation. Can't say why. The big staked plants in my veggie plot sure get munched. A different location.

I'm considering a hybrid sprawl, stake method. First, I'll have 1800-2000 plants, so I need to look at the cost and time to try to stake them all, even using a Florida Weave. My plan:

First, only till about an 18" space where the plants will grow. All of them will be determinants so they shouldn't get very tall. Keep the space between rows either mowed or use a weed killer to handle the grass.

Use short stakes, no more than 2.5' tall after being driven in the ground between every three plants. That would mean the plants would be close to 3' tall before they start to sprawl.

This way, by the time I start getting ripe fruit, dry weather will be here and the ground between the plants should be basically brown sod.

At least that's my plan!

Mike

Very interesting thread. I too have begun to grow by sprawling. I am on plastic mulch and so far the only issue has been winds snapping the base of unstaked plants, perhaps 10% of them. Most seem fine. Fruit should be maturing any day now on the earliest of them (jaunne flame). I only grow heirlooms. It will be interesting to see how the beefsteaks vs. Cherries do. I imagine the black plastic will deter almost all ground borne insect eaters and keep pathogen transfer from soil to leaf at near zero. No splashing soil during downpours. I live in a location that has 12 months of tomato growing so will be interesting to see production, longevity, unwanted munchers disease etc.

Thanks to profits from my tomato plant sales I was able to buy six Texas Tomato Cages last year and twelve this year, so for the first time in my life I will have 18 tomato plants growing in cages. BTW, I wouldn't have bought these cages if my gardening hobby didn't pay for them. Anyway, up until last year I always let my tomato plants sprawl. Sometimes I would put wood chips under the vines to try to keep them off the soil.
The three main problems with letting tomatoes sprawl are:
1. Damage from insects, roly polys, slugs, snails, and earwigs, both to any fruit touching the ground and sometimes even any leaves touching the ground.
2. Rot from being in contact with the ground, especially with large, slow to ripen beefsteak size tomatoes. Fast ripening or thick skinned tomatoes, for example Juliette, almost never had any rot.
3. Sunscald from having the tomatoes exposed to the almost continuous California sunshine. We go seven months without any measureable rain. Caged tomatoes seem to shade the fruit better with the foliage forced into a small volume inside the cage.
That said, tomatoes in the wild are sprawlers, not upright growers. They are not equiped with tentacles to grow vertically like some vineing type plants like cucumber or squash or beans. I read on one thread that big tomato laden plants will sometimes collapse inside a tomato cage because the stems are not meant to support a load of fruit with the plant growing vertically.
And I also read that a sprawling plant will produce a greater total weight of tomatoes, but probably less usable fruit then caged plants.
But besides the expense of tomato cages, you have the constant work of walking through your tomato patch guiding the vines that want to sprawl horizontally back into the cage so they grow vertically, sometimes breaking off a branch in the process.
I am guessing gravity would also make it harder for the nutrients and water from the roots to reach the top of a tall plant compared to the same vines lying on the ground. I read the worlds biggest tomato plant was a Sun Gold with vines 65 feet long. I doubt it could have grown that big if you had it inside a 65 foot tall cage or tied onto a 65 foot tall flagpole.

I, too, am glad this thread got bumped up.

I don't sprawl mine on the ground, but...I do sprawl them on cattle panel.

To start...I do use the "cheap" cages. When they reach the top of those, I put saw horses in the garden & lay long metal pipes across them & tie them to the horses. Then, I lay cattle panel on top of the metal bars & tie that to the bars. WAH-LAAAA...I have almost all of my mater's waist high, when it comes time to start picking. I do guide the branches thru the cattle panels until they're big enough to find their own way.

If the plants get sprawling beyond the cattle panel, I take 2" PVC pipe (that I've cut 2 notches out of one end to hold more cattle panel)and drive it into the ground and put cattle panel on them. Sliding/resting/sitting the cattle panel into the notches on the end of the PVC pipe, eliminates having to tie the cattle panel down. Keeps the mater's high & dry...and, clean. :)

forpityssake,

I'd love to see a picture of your cattle panel setup if you have one - it seems like a really interesting concept (like a horizontal trellis?).

How did you arrive at your design?

~emmers

Great informative read. The only thing that I can add is that I plant on plastic mulch and then when the tomatoes start to lie on the ground I lay straw under them. I may have to do this a couple of times to keep the straw dry. I tried the Fla. weave last year and really thought that it was too time consuming and still used straw under the plants. Most all of the Amish in this area use the Fla. weave method. BTW, the only problem that I had with the sprawling method was with mice, usually was the really nice, big, juicy tomatoes. They really loved the Hillbillys. A new cat now takes care of any mice in the garden. If the rain would stop I'd be happy with any method.

I arrived at my design when I realized just how far indeterminate Early Girls can travel in good soil. LOL

I've been growing Early Girls for MANY many years & finally 12 years ago, put in raised beds. The soil is 1/3 clay...1/3 sand & 1/3 turkey poo. I've yet had to amend the soil. My beds are 16' long & 10' wide.

There are 3 plants in these pics. They take up the entire area & then some, some years. That's when I need to add on to the main center panel. I have different sized pieces of cattle panel for just that reason. In the first pic, you can see that it's ready for a notched 2" PVC pipe.

I'll try and remember, this year, to get a pic while the "horizontal trellis" is empty. :)

I use zip ties to tie the panels to the metal pipes & each other.

Last year, I gave at least 175 lbs. away. I average 350 mater's per plant.

TinyPic gave me fits, soooo...I hope this link works.

In the preview, I only was able to link to one pic.
This link SHOULD get you to the 2nd pic. http://oi54.tinypic.com/23kw6e9.jpg

Here is a link that might be useful:

try this. (My computer is now giving me fits.)

Here is a link that might be useful:

pityssake, Impressive, like picking grapes. i like it.

wow. I would like to see it empty if you remember after your tomato feasting is over for the summer. :)

But that is really something! How do you get to all of the tomatoes?

Thanks very much for posting the pics despite the fits!

~emmers

Celebrity and some Yellow Pear sprawl and do very well at sprawling. My only problem was reaching in and through to get the fruits. I think it actually helps with the brutal Texas sun to let them sprawl.

Forpityssake...that's wonderful and works so well for you. Thank you for the pictures. It's only June, and my two bushes have climbed out of their cages and down. I propped the growth up on an oversized pot for one bush and a couple of stakes for the other, but I know it's just a temporary fix. I really don't like them laying on the ground.

Ahh, thank you for opening my eyes a little forpityssake. I see the trick is to let them sprawl, while keeping them off the ground at the same time. I don't have the cattle panels to reproduce your setup, but it has opened my mind to horizontal trellising/support.