Single vines vs Caged unpruned

CarolynPhillips · January 24, 2011

I was hoping to see more market post about do's and don'ts and best ways to grow for profit.
Maybe I didn't look far enough back into the past.

I have grown tomato plants many different ways and I don't see much difference as far as production goes if you base it upon a certain amount of space to grow them in.

Been growing tomato produce for 7 years.

Growing a long bed of tomatoes and pruning them all to a single vine is very time consuming and does not bother me until it starts getting hot outside then I give up and walk away.

Growing tomatoes in cages is less time consuming cause you don't have to do all that pruning----just a little to keep them in their caged limits but the plants seem to get fungus a lot quicker this way.

I thought about caging and pruning more than usual.

I need to make a decision ---to cage or grow single vines. It's almost time to sow seeds.

I have the source to grow tomatoes just about anyway I want to==just cant make up my mind which way to do it this year.
I never ever get to hear about other growers success. I been stuck here in my own little world doing my own thing.
and would love to see your photos too.
I am sick of looking at mine.

What are ya'll doing? How is it working out for you?

JackE · January 24, 2011

Hello, Carolyn:

We have that one thread on non-profits, but there is a lengthy older thread on tomato support system. Lots of info there. I made one post there describing our system.

Most commercial growers plant determinates, at least we do, which don't require pruning and adapt well to simpler support systems, like short-staking, half-cages or Florida weave (see my post on that thread).
Some people even let them sprawl on the ground - usually on plastic.

There are older threads below here that pretty-well cover every aspect of tomato production in quantity.

Jack

surf4grrl · February 9, 2011

Howdy,

I guess the biggest question is quantity - once you increase the quantity of your plants - it becomes pretty much impossible to prune, cage etc. your plants. How many plants/acreage do you have?

I use the florida weave and tuck everything in - I do find the wooden stakes too small. This past year I used them and trialled the t fence posts (7'). The t fence posts were so much better, last longer, sturdier - but when your talking about buying thousands of t posts- the cost gets prohibitive.

So, I may do so in the future - but not this year.

JackE · February 10, 2011

Hi Carolyn --

This year I'll plant about 4000 tomato plants - a half acre or so. I only have three acres under irrigation and mostly plant tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and okra. Two other growers in our project, who plant potatoes, corn and peas, have an additional 12 acres under irrigation.

I use 3/8" steel rebar. It comes in 20' lengths and I cut it into 5 four-foot stakes. (T-posts are WAY too costly in those quantities, hard to drive, even harder to pull-up and unnecessary for determinates). 3/8 cuts very easily with a grinder - some people use 1/2" - it's a lot sturdier but much harder to cut. 3/8" works good enough - sometimes it collapses in places. Unsightly, but most of the fruit is okay.

I set the rebar stakes before planting (we plant by hand) - 3' apart and one foot deep - and put two plants between every two stakes -18" apart. The stakes stick-up three feet and that gives us room for three runs of string - sometimes we can get by with two.

It's not neat or pretty, but it keeps the tomatoes off the ground. There's always a lot of suckers falling out into the pathways with fruit on the ground and we harvest those green (fried green tomatoes are big around here).

This year I'm putting-in a couple hundred indeterminates - for the first time in many years. I have nearly 1000 reinforcing wire half-cages ( 2-1/2 ft high). We are wiring some back together to accomodate the indeterminates. Weaving those kind of tomatoes would DEFINTELY require t-posts - but I wouldn't even try to support them with anything but cages. They are a real pain-in-the-neck - but they protect the fruit from the sun!

We have suffered severe sunscald damage the last two years and may have to return to vining varieties if the new sunscreen spray (Purshade)we're gonna try doesn't work. I sure hope it works - my big worry is how hard it's going to be to wash/wipe-off. It's organic and harmless, but traces of white residues would turn-off the customers for sure!

Jack

CarolynPhillips · January 9, 2012

wow= a couple weeks after i posted this, I had sold our mobile home so we could build a house and completely forgot to come back and check for replys. Aint it funny---i sit here with the same thoughts from last year that I never followed up on.

I guess i better go read some topics....
but to answer= a year later===== I have 10 acres...half of it is worthless for farming cause it floods during rainy season. I don't have much space to work with. It's actually embarrassing compared to 3 and 4 acres of tomatoes with 4000 plants!!!!!! wow.....I wish!!!

travis · January 11, 2012

What tomato varieties have you had the best luck with in terms of disease tolerance, heat setting abilities, productivity, and customer acceptance in Nauvoo, Alabama?

If I were growing strictly for market, and my customers would buy all the typical, red, commercial quality tomatoes I set out, then I would stick to short stake, determinate, disease resistant, hotset type tomatoes specifically bred to tolerate your climate conditions and disease stress. I'd also grow the varieties of determinates that require little or no pruning to achieve the best quality and size of fruit.

I suggested some varieties in your other thread, and will repeat those here along with a few others that I think you can grow sprawled on straw, Florida weaved on short stakes, or contained in wire cages 4 - 5 feet tall: Mountain Glory, Florida 7514, Bella Rosa, Top Gun, Fletcher, Talladega, and Rocky Top, in that order.

When I say minimal pruning, what I am talking about is everything below the first robust side shoots, occasional leaf pruning to stimulate flowering but not so much as to reduce the canopy to the extent of causing sun scald, and the removal of any obvious diseased leaves or fruit. Other than that, I'd cage them and let them go. Florida weave is too much work in the extreme heat or high sun, in my opinion. And sprawling on straw can encouraged foliage problems and fruit rot when you have particularly a wet season. But those are options if you don't have enough cages.

The reason I suggest the shorter determinates is because most wire suitable for tomato cages comes in 4 or 5 foot heights, and I think any variety I listed will not top a 4 foot cage unless grown in less than 8 hours full sun.

I have only listed large fruited, firm, red, round, commercial quality hybrids in this message. Yes, there are open pollinated varieties that might suit your purposes, but I get the idea you're looking for what I have listed because the first thread I read mentioned Better Bush and the qualities you thought it provided as a market tomato.

January 24, 2011	#1
CarolynPhillips Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Nauvoo, Alabama Posts: 184	Single vines vs Caged unpruned I was hoping to see more market post about do's and don'ts and best ways to grow for profit. Maybe I didn't look far enough back into the past. I have grown tomato plants many different ways and I don't see much difference as far as production goes if you base it upon a certain amount of space to grow them in. Been growing tomato produce for 7 years. Growing a long bed of tomatoes and pruning them all to a single vine is very time consuming and does not bother me until it starts getting hot outside then I give up and walk away. Growing tomatoes in cages is less time consuming cause you don't have to do all that pruning----just a little to keep them in their caged limits but the plants seem to get fungus a lot quicker this way. I thought about caging and pruning more than usual. I need to make a decision ---to cage or grow single vines. It's almost time to sow seeds. I have the source to grow tomatoes just about anyway I want to==just cant make up my mind which way to do it this year. I never ever get to hear about other growers success. I been stuck here in my own little world doing my own thing. and would love to see your photos too. I am sick of looking at mine. What are ya'll doing? How is it working out for you? __________________ Happy Gardening Carolyn

January 9, 2012	#5
CarolynPhillips Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Nauvoo, Alabama Posts: 184	wow= a couple weeks after i posted this, I had sold our mobile home so we could build a house and completely forgot to come back and check for replys. Aint it funny---i sit here with the same thoughts from last year that I never followed up on. I guess i better go read some topics.... but to answer= a year later===== I have 10 acres...half of it is worthless for farming cause it floods during rainy season. I don't have much space to work with. It's actually embarrassing compared to 3 and 4 acres of tomatoes with 4000 plants!!!!!! wow.....I wish!!! __________________ Happy Gardening Carolyn

January 24, 2011	#2
JackE Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Woodville, Texas Posts: 520	Hello, Carolyn: We have that one thread on non-profits, but there is a lengthy older thread on tomato support system. Lots of info there. I made one post there describing our system. Most commercial growers plant determinates, at least we do, which don't require pruning and adapt well to simpler support systems, like short-staking, half-cages or Florida weave (see my post on that thread). Some people even let them sprawl on the ground - usually on plastic. There are older threads below here that pretty-well cover every aspect of tomato production in quantity. Jack

February 9, 2011	#3
surf4grrl Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: field of dreams Posts: 97	Howdy, I guess the biggest question is quantity - once you increase the quantity of your plants - it becomes pretty much impossible to prune, cage etc. your plants. How many plants/acreage do you have? I use the florida weave and tuck everything in - I do find the wooden stakes too small. This past year I used them and trialled the t fence posts (7'). The t fence posts were so much better, last longer, sturdier - but when your talking about buying thousands of t posts- the cost gets prohibitive. So, I may do so in the future - but not this year.

February 10, 2011	#4
JackE Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Woodville, Texas Posts: 520	Hi Carolyn -- This year I'll plant about 4000 tomato plants - a half acre or so. I only have three acres under irrigation and mostly plant tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and okra. Two other growers in our project, who plant potatoes, corn and peas, have an additional 12 acres under irrigation. I use 3/8" steel rebar. It comes in 20' lengths and I cut it into 5 four-foot stakes. (T-posts are WAY too costly in those quantities, hard to drive, even harder to pull-up and unnecessary for determinates). 3/8 cuts very easily with a grinder - some people use 1/2" - it's a lot sturdier but much harder to cut. 3/8" works good enough - sometimes it collapses in places. Unsightly, but most of the fruit is okay. I set the rebar stakes before planting (we plant by hand) - 3' apart and one foot deep - and put two plants between every two stakes -18" apart. The stakes stick-up three feet and that gives us room for three runs of string - sometimes we can get by with two. It's not neat or pretty, but it keeps the tomatoes off the ground. There's always a lot of suckers falling out into the pathways with fruit on the ground and we harvest those green (fried green tomatoes are big around here). This year I'm putting-in a couple hundred indeterminates - for the first time in many years. I have nearly 1000 reinforcing wire half-cages ( 2-1/2 ft high). We are wiring some back together to accomodate the indeterminates. Weaving those kind of tomatoes would DEFINTELY require t-posts - but I wouldn't even try to support them with anything but cages. They are a real pain-in-the-neck - but they protect the fruit from the sun! We have suffered severe sunscald damage the last two years and may have to return to vining varieties if the new sunscreen spray (Purshade)we're gonna try doesn't work. I sure hope it works - my big worry is how hard it's going to be to wash/wipe-off. It's organic and harmless, but traces of white residues would turn-off the customers for sure! Jack

January 11, 2012	#6
travis Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Evansville, IN Posts: 2,984	What tomato varieties have you had the best luck with in terms of disease tolerance, heat setting abilities, productivity, and customer acceptance in Nauvoo, Alabama? If I were growing strictly for market, and my customers would buy all the typical, red, commercial quality tomatoes I set out, then I would stick to short stake, determinate, disease resistant, hotset type tomatoes specifically bred to tolerate your climate conditions and disease stress. I'd also grow the varieties of determinates that require little or no pruning to achieve the best quality and size of fruit. I suggested some varieties in your other thread, and will repeat those here along with a few others that I think you can grow sprawled on straw, Florida weaved on short stakes, or contained in wire cages 4 - 5 feet tall: Mountain Glory, Florida 7514, Bella Rosa, Top Gun, Fletcher, Talladega, and Rocky Top, in that order. When I say minimal pruning, what I am talking about is everything below the first robust side shoots, occasional leaf pruning to stimulate flowering but not so much as to reduce the canopy to the extent of causing sun scald, and the removal of any obvious diseased leaves or fruit. Other than that, I'd cage them and let them go. Florida weave is too much work in the extreme heat or high sun, in my opinion. And sprawling on straw can encouraged foliage problems and fruit rot when you have particularly a wet season. But those are options if you don't have enough cages. The reason I suggest the shorter determinates is because most wire suitable for tomato cages comes in 4 or 5 foot heights, and I think any variety I listed will not top a 4 foot cage unless grown in less than 8 hours full sun. I have only listed large fruited, firm, red, round, commercial quality hybrids in this message. Yes, there are open pollinated varieties that might suit your purposes, but I get the idea you're looking for what I have listed because the first thread I read mentioned Better Bush and the qualities you thought it provided as a market tomato.