New idea coming up :-) how about bicycle inner tube feeling with heavy materials and circle the stem :-). Now I tried this one, two polythene plastic bags filled with water, it's better than the stones in smaller containers: Possible problem is partially blocking the air. Caelian This post was edited by chilliwin on Sat, Jun 15, 13 at 10:30

I had been looking for assorted methods of supporting tomatoes & found this thread from '09. I never liked the idea (or task!) of staking & having to prune to a fare-thee-well, so most of my gardening years (more than 40 now!) I have used 5' high cages made of 4" square fencing that lasted for years. (Had to top the tomatoes, of course, as they outgrow it, but..) But when most of my cages were crushed one winter as they lay stored piled one atop the other at the edge of the woods and a large limb fell on them, rendering them a twisted mess that was not worth trying to untangle, I could not find that type of fencing any more. Only thing close was concrete reinforcing wire, which of course is a much heavier gauge and therefore much harder to work with -- and to store. So I went with plain generic yard fencing with 2" x 4" rectangles--which are very inconvenient because I end up each year having to cut a number of the vertical wires in order to get at the tomatoes -- eventually these Swiss-cheesed cages will be useless! Also we have moved since and I now have been teaching some gardening courses and seminars so have wanted to try some different supports as demos for my "students" -- all older, retired folk. And also now I have raised beds compliments of my wonderful hubby. Last year I had pretty good results using the concrete reinforcing wire that was leftover from pouring a concrete floor we made, so I used it as a fence around one of the raised beds. I planted the tomatoes (a dozen plants, I think, of 5 different kinds, paste & salad types) just inside the fence and did some fairly extensive pruning of suckers, weaving the remaining the vines in & out of the squares. Now, this year, since of course one should not plant tomatoes the same spot 2 years running, and because we did not feel like taking down the fence entirely (installed with steel posts and a lot of heavy wire to keep everything straight & true), I planted peas along it and so had to come up with an alternate plan for the 'maters. I did remove one 5' section of the concrete wire fence and erected it in another bed using 2 more steel posts. This time, though, I planted the toms just inside the fence and then, once the tomatoes had reached about 20' tall, ran a length of clothesline rope from one post to the other along the other side of the tomatoes. In this way, I am hoping to contain the plants but not have to prune. I HATE removing those branches of potential fruit!! I also am trying a couple of other techniques, including the Florida weave. But now that those plants are growing taller, and I do not want to prune them, I find that the very plentiful foliage is mashed together so the plants are not getting the air circulation they should have. So now I am thinking of adding a second row of stakes and re-doing and modifying the weave allowing the plants more room to spread out and up. So it will no longer be a true FL weave, I guess, but an Ohio weave! LOL

Alexis, The reason many people pull and replace tomato plants here in the summer with fresh plants for the fall is because the mid-summer through late-summer heat is hard on plants that already are stressed from carrying a heavy load of fruit in our typical summer conditions. Plants that look wonderful in mid-June can look like crap by late July, and sometimes they can look like crap by late June if disease strikes. Since pests (like spider mites, for example) tend to flock to stressed plants, fresh new plants often are not as attractive to pests either. It is a personal choice though. Lots of people cut back their summer plants by 40-50-60% and hope to get fresh new regrowth that will produce a nice harvest for fall. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Many variables are involved. It works best if the plants have remained relatively pest-free and disease-free, and it works best in years that are not drought years, since summer drought just adds to the plants' stress. I vary what I do in any given year, depending on how the plants look, what the weather is like, and how tired I am of picking tomatoes. There's always a certain point in mid-summer where I'm so tired of canning, dehydrating and freezing tomatoes that I contemplate pulling every single plant just so I can stop dealing with the harvest. I never really yank out all of them, but sometimes in a drought year, I just close the gate and walk away and pretty much abandon them. Amazingly, some of them will survive, even if they are sickly, spider mite-infested and starved for water. Then, when the weather cools down, they make a lot of new growth and set fruit, and then the race is on to keep the plants from freezing long enough for that fall tomato fruit to ripen. Since moving here, we've had our first freeze as early as Sept. 30th and as late as either December 16th, 17th or 18th, so the fall tomato season can come to a very abrupt halt if there's an early freeze and the plants are not covered up to protect them, or it can seemingly drag on forever and forever and forever. collegekid, I don't think I've ever topped a plant in my life. I let them climb to the top of their cages and then cascade back down to the ground. With one variety (Tess' Land Race Currant), the plants grew up out of their 8' tall cage, then cascaded back down to the ground. Once the cascading branches reached the ground, I cut them off a couple of inches above ground so they wouldn't be in constant contact with the ground and more vulnerable to disease from soil splash. Dawn

Definitely put spaces in your 200' rows. I tried it a few years ago, and now none of any of my rows are longer than 75 feet. When picking, you really need a resting/stopping spot. Not only for physically, but mentally. I make my "plots" less than 75 feet wide and then I put a "drive" area of about 15 feet, then another plot. That way we can bring a vehicle or wagon pulled by tractor/lawn or regular down the drive and pick up the baskets of produce. We have 4 adults that start picking, each in a different row. We have 2 children ages 4 & 7 that run boxes. We use 25# tomato boxes to pick into. Whoever is tired and to the end of row, goes and gets vehicle with wagon and picks up boxes of produce and drives around to next "break" in row, then starts picking again. This year the 7 yr old, might use his 4 wheeler with wagon for box running and produce pick up, haven't decided yet since it's not time to pick anything yet.