I think I write those words every year! I’ve tried so many ways of growing tomatoes. Many years ago, I started out (as everyone does) with those flimsy cages you can get at any hardware store. Then I graduated to larger store-bought cages, then homemade cages, then various trellising systems such as Florida weave, then pruned onto stakes, and now finally have settled on something that will last for years.
The idea is to emulate the way tomatoes are grown in greenhouses, on strings. Of course greenhouses are expensive enclosed buildings, which require careful ventilation. They’re built with a sort of grid of rafters so that wires can run across the top, and then strings can be tied into the wires, and the tomatoes trained on to the strings. Technically we have space for such a building (if not the budget), but it wouldn’t look right in our yard or our neighborhood, where the houses are built close together, and would likely require a permit. Our climate is such that we don’t really need such a large enclosed growing space. Plus, there’s the “pretty” factor, which is important to me. I wanted our system to be practical, while open to the elements, and artistic. At the same time, we’ve been trying to add vertical interest to the garden with all kinds of trellising systems and new mid-level plantings at the 6-8 foot level. So I asked Tom to build me some tall structures with cross beams that I could use as ‘rafters’ onto which I could tie the strings which would be the growing support for the tomato plants.
Tom has become quite a builder in recent years; he’s built us a farm table and benches, big wooden planters for things like hops, and of course the chicken coop. I knew he could do this project and that, while difficult, would provide some much-needed respite from his crazy job. It took him two weekends, plus some planning and sketch-up time, to come up with this design, which we tweaked a few times in the course of the project. We needed plenty of structural strength to stand up to winds and weather and random bumps by humans. We needed to be able to access the plants easily. We needed to be able to fit other trellises and hoops underneath them, for different crops and different seasons.
I’m quite pleased with the result. These trellises add a real sense of permanence to the garden, and will be great for our most important yearly crop (tomatoes). It has allowed me to plant 10 seedlings per bed, as each will be trained to its leader and side shoots pruned. I put the cherry tomatoes in the back next to the chicken coop, so I could let them grow a little wide and expand onto the fenced run, if we like. It’s possible (but maybe I’m stretching here) that squirrels will find the strings confounding, or too slight to confidently support their weight, and they’ll leave the fruit to us. We’ll have to see about that.
Each string is tied on to a crosspiece at a height of 6 feet, and then tied on to a wire ‘pin’ that I made from 16-gauge wire, which is firmly anchored in the soil at the plant’s base. Enough slack is left to give plenty of room for twisting as the season goes on. If the tomato wants to grow taller than six feet, I’ll extend the string at the top to the highest crosspieces which are at 8 feet.
I bought 200 of these clips which are made for greenhouse growing; they have a little clip which clips on to the string, and a big clip that holds the stem of the tomato plant. I intend to use about four per plants as they grow. Hopefully, with care, I can use them again next year.
Tom used 2x2 redwood posts to build the structure. Using my dad’s woodshop and tools, he was able to make angled joints to join the pieces together in the frame, for added strength. If you’re interested in knowing more about how he made them, or to see his sketch-up design, contact me here and I’ll get those plans to you. These structures were built so that they could be taken apart and stored each year, but I don’t intend to do that - I’ll leave them up year-round, as I believe they add so much interest to the garden.
All in all, we spent about $300 on this system. We felt this expense was reasonable, since we grow many hundreds of pounds of tomatoes each summer to preserve for the off season. Any method of trellising tomatoes costs money; my other idea for a permanent structure was cattle panels on t-posts, and those panels are $50 a pop and we would have needed eight of them. I much prefer these wooden structures. They will last for many years, and I think the instillation is beautiful.