The cost of trellising

[Fred Hempel]

I am trying to figure out how much of my field I will trellis this year. A few years ago I moved from sprawling to trellised plants because it was clear that trellised plants would produce more saleable tomatoes.

However, I am starting to think that financially it is better to let plants sprawl, and harvest even as low as 1/3 the "firsts" (with 1/3 seconds, and 1/3 complete "loss" compared to trellised plants).

The costs of trellising (mostly labor) are just way too high.

I realize this doesn't apply to gardeners and limited space growers, but is anyone else coming to similar conclusions?

I think I might limit my trellising to a few cherry tomatoes I am growing for market production.

[biscgolf]

I run welded wire mesh in 100 foot rows and use cable ties to tie up the plants. Actual labor time spent on trellising is significant but I would say it saves an equal amount of time (and a huge amount of back pain) that would be otherwise spent harvesting from sprawling plants.

It also extends the life of the plant by making them less susceptible to viruses and fungi which come upward from the ground thereby saving at least one additional planting per year. This may not be as much of a concern in Cali where the humidity is not as bad as here in the mid-atlantic.

[Dutch]

Fred many years ago when I had large glass commercial greenhouses all the tomatoes plants inside were trellised. Outside plants were sprawled on straw. 4 foot spacing between plants and 6 foot rows took up a lot of space. I use cattle panels now with 2 feet between plants and 4 foot rows.
Dutch

[Salsacharley]

I grow 300 plants with trellising and that puts me at the limit for my ability to do the work myself. I actually combine vertical trellising with a weave with poly twine. I use 2" x 3" studs as vertical posts with 1/2" electrical conduit pipe for horizontal, so my costs aren't too bad, but the labor is murder. I find even my system is back breaking, but I can't imagine dealing with sprawl. I don't have the room for sprawling and I maximize my space with trellising and pruning (labor intensive). I can't afford to sacrifice 1/3 of my production to sprawl losses. If I was growing at a larger scale where space isn't an issue (like Joseph) I might consider sprawling. I bet Joseph doesn't lose much production to waste with his ruthless selection process.

[Marcus1]

Fred, I stretch a double line of 48 inch hortonova trellis about 10 in. apart to support my determinate plants. I weave two 5/8 " nylon straps in and out of the squares at the top and the middle. Every 10' I drive a tomato stake in on both sides and screw a piece of wood across the two to support the strap in the middle and every 20' I drive a 6' stake in on both sides and attach two pieces of wood one middle one top to support the straps. The trellis has railroad ties at the end to stretch the straps and trellis. This has worked really good for me, I don't have a lot of time or labor to do a lot of plant training so the double fence keeps the plants growing upright and allows plenty of air movement and easier picking. I'll try to have my son post a picture. The approx. cost for 1500 plants was 260/trellis, 160/strapping, 300/6' stakes, 150/4' tom stakes and the ties on the ends for a total of under a 1000 for 1500 plants. I considered it money well spent. The materials should last for years and are light weight and easy to work with. It took me about 20 hrs. to set up the fence for 9 beds that had 560 plants last year not counting setting the ties on the end, so not that bad. I will have about 2000 plants this year using this method. I used to do a lot of sprawled plants but the losses and the extra time picking plants that were tangled has led me to this method.

Good luck
Marcus

[Cole_Robbie]

Last year most of my seedlings froze, and I had to plant my high tunnel in Big Beef, because that was all I could buy. What a pain in the rear! I am never going to do that again. For a while, I was spending 1-2 hours a day tying up vines on just 150 row feet.

The biggest reason for me to try to keep vines from sprawling is that the grass grows up around them and I get a lot of stink bug and other bug damage.

I used cattle gates for supports, and I will keep using them for my outdoor plants. They are 4'x12' with 8" squares. Some of the gates had chicken wire on them, and not taking it off was a mistake, because I had fruit grow into the wire. Another problem I had with tying up vines is that I tied up developing fruit into the cluster of vine; when they ripened, they weren't round any more from growing against the vine.

I haven't put it up yet, but I bought some old chain link fence rolls, and I'm going to use that for a few rows.

There's a reason why standard commercial practice - at least in any field near me- is staked culture of compact determinates. Just the materials cost to support a big field of tomatoes would be huge, and then there is the labor investment as well.

[Fusion_power]

Oak stakes, hay twine, and a dibbing stick are adequate for determinate varieties. I can get the cost down to about $20 per 100 feet for materials and a cost of 2 hours labor to install the stakes and string.

Indeterminates are another story. I have to use 8 ft T-posts and run the twine 6 feet high. I have about 200 of the T-posts which at today's prices would cost about $1500. Labor to install the posts and run the twine goes up to 4 hours per 100 feet. It gets expensive FAST.

[reddeheddefarm]

Fred we use a trellising system I developed for our cucumbers and beans that would work for tomatoes ( I think) similar to the green house system of dropping a line from an overhead support then clipping the vine to it. My question would be the wind. Our cukes and beans do fine with it and we get beat on pretty hard. We will try kuri's on it this year and possibly another vining squash.

As for our tomatoes, we are going to a combination of 15 year land scape fabric we can roll up and use again and Florida weave. We had a bunch of tomato plants left over we didn't sell at farmers market so we just staked down the fabric over grass, cut holes, planted them and let them sprawl. They did ok with not a great deal of issues as far as ground contact. The reason we will stay with the weave is it saves space.I have a picture of the trellis buit can't figure out how to post it here. I can email it of you like

[Dutch]

Just a quick post about posting pictures.
Posting picture on Tomatoville; http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=406

Fred, I apologize for this post off topic.

Dutch

[reddeheddefarm]

this is the trellis we use

[AlittleSalt]

Fred, I use a system that is very cheap for me. I use T Posts every 8' on both sides of the rows and run plastic-coated wire 18" apart. Nylon string would work as well. It just happens that I have a lot of T Posts and spools of plastic-coated wire sitting around waiting to be used.

With this set up, if you need to add plant support between the two - you can tie strings to each side to give support between the plants.

[Worth1]

I think Fred's field may have 1000's of tomatoes in it.
He did mention something about cost labor.
Sometimes you can outgrow your ability to deal with things.

Worth

[Fred Hempel]

This is the problem. I have a minimum of 6,000 linear row feet, and that makes trellising a multi-person, daily task during high season.

I am planning on widening my rows (plenty of space for that), and letting the plants sprawl. Except for the cherry tomatoes. They will likely be trellised.

Labor is definitely the issue. I would say the "high cost" of labor, but that is kind of mis-leading when you look at it from the standpoint of the people involved. No one is getting rich working for me, unfortunately.

It is nice to see how others are doing things. Because I think I will always be trellising something.

Originally Posted by Worth1

I think Fred's field may have 1000's of tomatoes in it.
He did mention something about cost labor.
Sometimes you can outgrow your ability to deal with things.

Worth

[natural]

Several years ago I grew 3000 plants on approx. 6000 linear row feet. I used 6ft metal t-posts with a 10ft piece of 1/2 inch emt as the top support. I used the plastic hortonova trellis. I think I spent $600 on the plastic (10cents per foot).

I hired labor to pound in the posts and hang the trellis. That was $160.

We used a ty'mup gun to attach the plants to the trellis. That was $60. It made the continued supporting process go very quickly. I had one worker spend 8 hours per week maintaining the trellis. I sold all of my harvest so it was definitely profitable for me.

The metal posts and conduit and Ty'mup gun were a one time cost and are still usable today. I could get 2 years from the plastic trellis but didn't reuse due to concerns of transmitting disease.

I didn't find that my labor costs were too high with this setup. 8 hours per week was acceptable for me in exchange for having no losses of fruit and no plants on the ground.

Bill

[Worth1]

Fred as you know you are looking at around 2000 plants spaced at 3 feet.
But I think you may be growing even closer I have no idea, if at 2 feet apart it would be 3000 plants.

Other things to consider.
The loss of the fruit, if I read this correctly you are loosing 2/3's of the crop with sprawling?
Then it depends on how you are paying the labor, by the hour or piece work.

Final thoughts would be I think you may take some loss the first go around but in years to come the benefit would outweigh the loss in productivity.

One the cost of the tee post would be about a one time deal and they would be around $3000 for 600 of them maybe less the cost has went down, and the wire shouldn't be too much.

The labor if payed by the hour would be less due to the ease of working in the field.

I think the Florida weave would be your best bet if you wanted to do this.

You could do a test section and see if it works out.

Worth