YIKES! String Broke. Tomatoes on Ground

[PaulTandberg]

Originally Posted by dshreter

I’m not completely clear on what you’re describing by it being pinned beneath the metal pole and the poly cover...

Yes, friction, heat, UV rays all could have played their part...


My poly greenhouse looks like a rectangular tent. There is a center metal pole that supports the "roof's" peak, supports the poly that is stretched taut against it, holds the whole thing up. I snugged the to-be-tied string between the poly and the pole ...

... which, now that I have factored heat, sunlight/UV rays into the equation, seems like a really, really dumb idea. Next year I will tie the string to some type of metal/wire loop fashioned/adapted/purchased that I can attach to the center pole.

[PaulTandberg]

The string/clip approach works great in my greenhouse (with the right string). And by stringing a single leader, I have been able to grow more varieties in the limited greenhouse space I have available because a single strand strung tomato just doesn't take up as much space as the other approaches I've tried.

I have tried many approaches with my outdoor (non-greenhouse) tomatoes. Cages worked well, and trellising was the most fun, but training a single leader up a stake has always resulted in the most tomatoes early in the season, and again, in North Dakota, early matters.

If I do everything right and the season cooperates, I can get a staked single-leader 75-day tomato plant to start filling my BLTs with fat slicers in the latter part of July. This year, my Damsels and Jersey Boys look ready to start turning red any day now (7-13 as I type).

By repeated experience, I can get a caged tomato to produce its first ripe fruit in about the same time frame as a single-leader staked, but I just won't get nearly as many ripe tomatoes in that all important first month. By September, the caged/trellised tomato may be getting ready to blow by that staked tomato in production as if it were standing still, but, by September, my North Dakota tomato season is winding down and a large proportion of that extra fruit on the caged/trellised plants will never ripen. (And personally, tomatoes that do ripen in mid-September just don't cut it compared to those early July and August tomatoes.)

I need to curb a tomato's propensity to put out vegetative growth and put as much of its energy as possible into developing fruit, even if the total amount of fruit is ultimately limited by this decision.

If I lived in North Carolina or Missouri or Indiana... or darn near anywhere else, I could well be whistling a different tune (I really did have fun trellising, amazing how much territory a tomato can cover if you let it). But, it is horses for courses, and up here, there just isn't a lot of time to get the job done.

If early matters more than more, staking/stringing single or double leader is hard to beat.

[b54red]

I use the lean and lower system and have now for about 10 years. I do this outside in the heat of a smoldering southern summer and have had some of my plants last for over 8 months due to the fact that they don't suffer as badly from diseases and pests. They are much easier to spray and prune and supporting them as they grow and get larger is a fairly easy proposition. The worst thing about the lean and lower single stem system of support is setting up the overhead support for the strings.

I have used all the other methods of support and found them wanting in our hot humid climate. Of all the other methods I had the next best luck with a trellis system but it required a lot of tying and as the plants got large it was very messy and difficult to tell where one plant ended and another began. I used Texas tomato cages for years and liked them for the first half of the season but as the plants got larger and the cages got filled or overflowing the problems with disease and pests would increase greatly. I still think they work for smaller plants that don't grow so large and aren't too bushy but I only grow a handful of those varieties.

The string you need for supporting lean and lower plants is the 130# baling twine. It is usually red and is much thicker than the 110# and much easier to handle and clip to. I have grown many huge loaded plants this way and have never had a string break. It is resistant to sun damage for at least a year and possibly longer but I would never reuse any sting from one year to the next and I always use new clips because they will be too brittle to be trusted the second year. I found out the hard way by reusing some of the clips and midway through the second season I started having problems with the clips breaking. It just isn't worth it to save a few dollars. I buy the clips from Hydra Gardens in bulk every few years so they are pretty cheap that way.

I like the lean and lower method the best for my garden but if I lived further north where the disease issues were not so prevalent I might use one of the other methods especially if I was looking for the greatest number of fruits in the shortest time possible. Lean and lower has allowed me to keep my plants productive for longer on average and it is so much easier when it comes to spraying which works for me. I think everyone should use the method that suits their conditions and goals the best.

Bill

[TomatoDon]

I haven't seen high tech greenhouse growers using cages either and I never said that I had. I am not here to argue, but my basic points are that I don't use the string and clip method, not all commercial growers use the string and clip method, and the large commercial growers I am aware of use the Florida weave method.

[PaulTandberg]

Thanks for the tips. Next year, fresh 130# baling twine from Tractor Supply and a new supply of clips from Hydro garden.

And, what the hay, maybe a bigger greenhouse...