Staking tomatoes the poor boy way

[Chuck]

In keeping with my tradition of laziness and procrastination I again waited until the last minute to stake my tomatoes and by pure luck I didn't loose anything as we have been having terrible thunderstorms and hail. So yesterday I staked most of mine but didn't get entirely finished and again last night more storms only this time no hail, just extremely high winds.

The way I stake tomatoes is to drive something into the ground about every 4-6 tomato plants. In my case a 5 foot long piece of rebar or in the case of commercial tomato growers T-Posts, but anything you can drive into the ground will work. Then I run 2 lengths of garden twine, one on each side of the plant and tie it off tightly on the rebar. Then if necessary I tie the 2 lengths together between the plants to make the whole thing sturdier and tighter.

When you start out, run the lengths of twine parallel with each other just below the first cluster of tomatoes and as the plant grows upward add more lengths of twine just as you did the first time. The first pic shows the rebar in place and the tomatoes tied on the right row. The left row wasn't completely done. The second pic shows the paralle lengths of twine in place. The 3rd pic is the two lengths tied together between the plants. The 4th and 5th pic shows some of the damage. The last pic shows undamaged plants that were tied up. Have I learned to not procrastinate? Probably not

 

[marlingardener]

Great idea for staking tomatoes, Chuck! We use metal railings and the guards put in front of windows, because they are cheap/free from the scrap yard. Basically the same idea. What do you use to tie up your tomatoes? We use strips of old cotton tee shirts, since when autumn tomato demise comes, we can just compost the whole thing--plant and ties.
Procrastination around here is called "I'm thinking about it."

 

[Chuck]

Great idea for staking tomatoes, Chuck! We use metal railings and the guards put in front of windows, because they are cheap/free from the scrap yard. Basically the same idea. What do you use to tie up your tomatoes? We use strips of old cotton tee shirts, since when autumn tomato demise comes, we can just compost the whole thing--plant and ties.
Procrastination around here is called "I'm thinking about it."

I use the bio-degradable garden twine. Its cheap and strong

 

[DeborahJane]

I need to be more diligent next tomato season. I use plastic tiers but they flop over once the plant gets too heavy.