San Marzano is indeterminate so yes will need caging/trellising. How is the bed situated? You can put them along the north side if that's the long side and make a trellis of EMT with rebar driven into the ground and conduit slipped over it, then clamped to the outside of the bed.

You will need to prune them to get 8 plants in 16ft.

If you have true Romas (a lot of mislabeling of any type of paste/plum shape as "Roma" out there) then they are determinates and could go along the south side of the same bed, I'd say 1ft in so good 3ft between them and the SM but if you have an unused bed that gets full day sun I think your tomatoes would do better if you split them between the beds to get more than 2ft between them. I plant mine 2ft apart but have very deep raised beds - 2ft deep of amended soil, 2-3 ft wide and a single row of tomatoes. I just built a new area with a 4ft wide center bed 2ft deep of composted manure (no native soil mixed in it at all) and am planting staggered rows of indeterminates app 18-20" apart as an experiment this year since my dad grows in a few inches of the same over his old side lawn (but my area was very rocky acid soil that was leveled and compacted with a bulldozer to put up a hoop house so I had to put compost on deeper).

So I think your original plan would work if your raised bed is deep with well-amended soil, or if you had decent soil underneath that was double-dug or tilled to loosen it. But if you've got poor soil (the reason for raised beds to begin with?) and less than 12" of good mix in the bed, I'd give the plants more room - and more water - than they would take planted "in ground". Think of that type of bed as a big container.

Don't prune the Romas if they are determinates.

Oh, and don't worry about rooting suckers from the SM - you're not likely to have room for more plants. Though you could do it if you want to give some away to friends/family. If you do use both beds for tomatoes, you may want to put some slicing tomatoes in there - anything you like for fresh eating, I recommend determinates, not only may you want some for salads/sandwiches but a lot of people on the Harvest (canning) forum think sauce tastes better with a variety of tomatoes included. Just don't put any purple/black ones in unless you want mud-colored sauce (you'd be amazed at how 1 tomato can change the color of a whole batch) LOL!

This post was edited by ajsmama on Fri, Jun 13, 14 at 9:25

Yes, they will all require some sort of support. The type of support you provide is up to you and there are many discussions here all about the various types of cages and staking set ups. Type 'cage or stake' in the search bar here to find them.

As for pruning or not, as long as you understand that it is not required, that it is just an option for any variety that is properly spaced and supported, then doing it on the San Marzanos (not the Roma) is your choice. Better yet move some of the plants to the other bed and increase your spacing.

Your bed will be heavily over-crowded so you will probably have to do some pruning with such close spacing. Pruning will cost you production so don't get carried away doing it.

As many have discussed here, rooting suckers works great. Lots of discussions here about how to do it.

For future reference next year you might also want to read through the discussions about what non-paste varieties actually make much better sauce so you can skip the Romas next time.

Dave

Hi ajsmama and Dave,

Wow! Thank you both for the great information, I really appreciate it. I'm glad I asked. :) Both my beds are basically running north to south on the south side of the house. They get sun around 9 am and shade starts to cover them around 6 pm. Both beds are made with 2"x10"s and are filled with a soil compost mix we get from the county. The soil in our area is really poor and hard and there are a lot of tree roots in the first top 6" of the soil even thought they are some 40+ feet away.

I'll definitely put more space between the plantings and I think I'll put the romas in one bed and the SM in the other. That should give them more space. For some reason I thought they were both determinant. I bought the romas from Lowes with the planting labels on them and I got the SMs from Walmart. Hopefully they are labeled correctly.

I'm glad to hear pruning really isn't necessary (especially if I give them more room), but I may try rooting some suckers just for the fun of it and for the learning experience and then give them way to some friends.

And thank you both for the recommendations on the harvest canning forum and for the discussions on using other tomatoes other than romas. I haven't done either yet but now that I know they're there, I will be doing some reading. Thanks. :)

Chris

If the long sides of the beds are east/west rather than north/south I would plant the SM along each east side, where they will not block the majority of the sun from the smaller Romas planted along the west side. Of course that's assuming you don't have a building or something to the west that blocks afternoon sun.

Dave grows in a much hotter climate than I do, so if he says you need to shade the Romas then ignore what I said about sun.

But I do think you're better off building 2 trellises and spreading the SM across the 2 beds rather than trying to squeeze them into the 16ft bed. Then plant the Romas in front (meaning sunny side, or whatever Dave recommends) of them.

If you plant the SM 3-4ft apart along 12-16ft beds then you might not have to prune them - or as much. If you put all 8 along a 16 ft trellis you will need to prune them.

Does the SM tag say they're determinate?

Hi ajsmama,

Thanks for the advice. The long side of the boxes face east and west with the 4 foot wide part facing north south. There are trees to the west but they don't block the sun until about 6 pm so the tomatoes will get full sun for about 9 hours. I like the idea of spreading out the SM over the 2 beds so I won't have to prune or at least keeping it to a minimum. I just went out and looked at the tags on the SM and the Romas and the SM tag says indeterminate and the Roma tag says determinant. I'm glad you asked because I missed it. I read on a food site recommending a variety of paste tomatoes for making sauce with and they said paste tomatoes are determinant which made harvesting and processing tomato sauce easier because the tomatoes would all be ready at about the same time. Oh well, that's ok, good lesson to learn. :) Next year I'll know what I'm doing! LOL!!

Chris