When I first started growing tomatoes I thought the only way was to put a stake in the ground and tie the plant to it as it grows.

IMO this has got to be the worst way, but if that is all you have........

Some of the best growers I know just let them sprawl on the ground. As this is the natural way for them to grow it is probably the best, but you have to have room and be concerned with ground contact (diseases)and other issues.

Back to staking.......

Remember the plant will be tall and heavy with fruit and wet foilage, swayed about by strong wind and pelted with rain.
If I were you I would erect something for the tomato plant to trellis on. Some use concrete rienforcement mesh, rolled into a cage and set on end. This is usually easy to find.
Any kind of cage or structure made of whatever you can obtain will work, so that as the plant gets about a foot tall it can start to be trained onto it. The leaves and branches can be tied to it but after a while if the spaces of the trellis are close together it will support itself.

I use panels of galvanized livestock fencing w/ 6" square holes, and use zipties to connect them into different arches and trellises.

Of course you can search in the FAQ up top.

Tom

I totally agree with you Tom. Allowing to sprawl on a straw mulch is about the best unless your trying to grow more plants in less space. For this I would recommend caging for the beginner or any one who doesn't prefer to prune. For someone who doesn't mind pruning, and wants to maximize space try trellising. Staking is OK if you just want tomatoes in the beginning of the season, or up until the point when the weight of the not yet ripe tomatoes cause the main stem to slide down the stake forming zig zag bends in it and making it look like some sort of vertical automobile wreck. When this happens don't get flustered, or become dismayed, just be glad they didn't fall over and snap the main stem off right at the ground like they did the previous year. If this sounds like it comes from experience that's because it does. Have you ever seen the movie; National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation? The part when Chevy chase gets so mad he starts kicking & throwing his lawn ornaments all over the yard? Well that was me with my tomato plants and stakes. It became an annual ritual. My neighbors wanted to have me institutionalized and my family suggested I get psychiatric help. My whole life had become unmanageable. Then a miracle happened. I found Gardenweb, where I learned that tomato stakes are the epitome of all evil and should be avoided at all costs. The people there were nice and they taught me about pruning, trellising and caging. It wasn't easy but the people there were very patient. Now my life is like a country and western song played backwards - They let me out of prison, The wife came home, My pickup truck is no longer in a ditch, etc. etc., and I owe it all to gardenweb. So if you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then keep coming back, AND STAY AWAY FROM THOSE TOMATO STAKES!
~Ken~

hahaha, a good read Ken. Nicely done

Where can you find these livestock panels.
No luck at Home Depot or Lowes.

I'm in Charleston SC and have had no luck at all.

Livestock panels come from Tractor Supply and run about $20 each. I use fencing wire. Roll off about 4' and make a circle or cylinder out of it. I also use stakes to hold the fencing wire up. I bought medal "rebar" from HD and cut it in about 6' lengths. I made up 20 of these and use them year after year. The photo is not great, but shows the design.

Great balls of fire!! Never have I witnessed such animosity
to the simple stake.

60 years ago I helped my mother drag out boards from under the garage, cut saplings from the field, and make up stakes
from whatever we could get our hands on cheap to tie up the tomatoes. Every year we were a little short and a number of the plants would just have to handle it sprawled out on the ground. In those days hay or straw was for horses and not to be wasted otherwise.

Time went by and I eventually commenced to garden on my own.
On an engineers wage I could pretty much afford whatever stakes, cages, rebar gizmos, fencing, hogpanel, etc. that might be available and also because of my access to surplus materials didn't have to spend much to get them. Suffice it to say that in 50 plus years of gardening I have tried everything from the Florida Weave to the Italian String Wrap, to cages, to teepees, to hogpanels, to sprawling on straw, to the simple old stake to deal with my tomatoes.I found there are advantages and disadvantages to every approach; where one gardens, why one gardens, what one desires in the way the garden looks, and how much storage space is available for the various devices used to support the plants influence what selection is best for the specific gardener.

Today I am reduced to a 22 by 28 foot back yard garden beside a lake surrounded by other folks who would not appreciate mounds of vegetation laden cages overwintering, or a spring through fall weed patch by the lake. In that 22 by 28 ft patch I generally put 3 dozen tomato plants, and
every other vegetable I want for fresh use and canning. I also am trying some container growing to expand the varieties I can grow and these look pretty nice lined up along my dock. I want lots of tomatoes for myself and my neighbors and I want them to look nice without blotches/blemishes and rot spots. I enjoy growing many varieties each year to learn what they are like and also to appreciate the different tastes and qualities from the different varieties. Being retired, I have whatever time
is required to train/weed/spray/whatever.

I CHOOSE 2"X 2" X 7' STAKES which I pound into the ground using a home built stake driver. I trim most of my plants to triple leaders but allow cherries and plums and a few low yielders to go as high as 5 leaders. I grow few if any determinates each year because I want to maximize my yield
as well as maximize the number of varieties I can grow in the space I allow. Typically, I grow 3 rows of 12 plants each (along the 28 ft leg) each row separated from the others by 3 feet. I use torn up rags to tie up my plants
and, no, they don't fall down to the ground!

I use hogpanel now for my pole beans. I don't have enough to grow tomatoes on them but have done so in the past and they do work fine. However, they limit your ability to
walk through your garden except in the one direction and that can be damn irritating! When we sold the old orchard and farm the mound of remesh and wire cages stayed for the new owner (who, I discovered, threw them away in favor of 6 stakes for his lonely 6 tomatoes).

I have only tried sprawling on one occasion on the farm with
a 20 x 20 test plot. Used straw to cover the ground. It
was certainly the lowest labor requirement approach but it
fell far short in quality and quantity of good attractive yield, and garden appearance (the latter not being very important in a farm setting other than to my wife).

And so I must conclude that there is still much to love
in the simple lowly lovely stake!!

Larry

Re: kawaiineko_gardener

I usually don't answer questions unless I have personal experience. I have no personal experience staking. This year, I will have no choice as I simply don't have money for cages and other staking methods I've tried in the past have way too labor intensive and didn't produce the results I was looking for. So, here is what I've learned from research (again, NOT from personal experience.) I'm only giving this a shot as it appears that your request for precise instructions has been answered by a debate over to stake or not-to-stake. If you are like me and have no choice, this doesn't help you.

First, you need something sturdy. Bamboo won't cut it. I tried some coated metal rods to support cages last year but those bent or broke. The 2"X 2" X 7' stakes mentioned by Larry seem to work for him. I figure some long rebar rods should work as well.

Next, they need to be tall. You want to be able to pound them at least a foot or two and have at least 6 feet left above the ground. Four feet worth of stake is worthless when your plant is seven feet tall!

Pound the stake into the ground when you plant your tomatoes. You don't want to do it after the plants are established as you may damage their roots.

About every foot or so, tie the plant to the stake using something soft. Larry mentioned torn rags. This should work well. Strips of old pantyhose should work also. The point is that you don't want your tie cutting into your stems. Also, tie in a figure eight. Basically, you wrap your tie around the stem, cross between the stem and stake, and then wrap it around the stake. This allows for some flexibility.

This is probably the most important part: Cut off all suckers. This will cut into your yield, but you should get bigger and better tomatoes. If you don't do this, they will run onto the ground, making your stakes worthless.

Hope this helps. If anything in here is not correct, please correct it for me as this will help me as well as kawaiineko. Like I said, this is from research, not experience.

I have cages, stakes and trellises. Stakes are good for me to grow many more different varieties (plants) in a given area. I have hard clay under my loose garden soil in that spot, and use fairly weak cut saplings for stakes so pounding them in is not possible. To solve this problem I have a T-post pounded in at each end of the 25 ft row and a 1/8 inch plastic coated cable clothes line strung between them (a good low stretch rope will work to). The stakes are pushed into the soil and tied off to the cable every two feet. I tie off the plants when the top starts to flop over (about ever 12-18 inches) and keep them pruned to no more than 3-4 vines. I tie them off loosely just below the flower truss using jute garden twine.

I stake my tomatoes differently than most people. I use five foot tall bamboo post and use a florida weave. when the tomato reaches the top of the post I tie a string to another post and then train the tomato along the string horizontally.

I too have tried various methods and always come back to my stakes. I also feel that the ease of access around the plants is important and I like the way they make everything look. I plant for yield but also enjoyment. I could spend hours in my little patch.

I used to use the green PVC coated 8 foot 5/8 inch stakes from Home Depot but every few years or so they would rust out.

A couple of years ago I decided to make 24 new stakes. I had some leftover 10 foot 5/4 mahogany decking left over so I ripped them 5/4 square. I now have 24+ 10 foot 5/4 inch mahogany stakes. I really like them. They go in the ground 1.5 foot leaving 8+ foot for the plant. I also get a kick out of using my little level to make 'em sort of straight. While doing the ripping I also lined them up and cut an 1/8th inch notch cross cut every 6 inches plus a hole in the top. This was an attempt to solve the only problem I have with stakes:

WHAT KIND OF KNOTTING IS BEST USED TO KEEP THE VINE HEALTHY AND NOT SLIPPING DOWN THE STAKE ?

I find tying tightly to the stake is not the way to go (strangle). That is why I put the hole in the top to try a top suspension-thing (like Timmy1 does) using tomato clips but I did not follow thru with it (I'm gonna try agin this year).

I'm also working again on my "invention" which is basically a very cheap (need many) loop of high gage (strong) galvanized (no rust) wire bent in a configuration to allow easy attachment to a wooden stake at anytime during the lifecyle.

Any help would be appreciated

Regarding the "pants on the ground" problem I can comment as follows:

I must confess,indeed,it has happened to me on one or two occasions. Both occured when using thinwall conduit the
electrician left behind when wiring our house. So, I stopped using slick stakes.

The stakes I use are ripped on my table saw from 2 x 4's
down to 2 x 2's. I cut off a foot from the worst end of the 2 x 4 x 8's before ripping to yield a 7 ft finished stake. The rough edge of the rip cut, plus using strips of torn rag (as from an old sheet) provide plenty of friction
to hold the plants up. Actually, I think the torn rag strips are the biggest contributor to holding things up.
I haven't done the "pants on the ground" trick for as far back as I can recall.

Archerb, you need not trim so severely to a single leader.
You can get greater yields of nicely shaped tomatoes by doing double or triple leaders and then thinning away any
misshapen/incorrectly pollinated fruits before they sap the strength from the plant. I usually start allowing suckers to develop into secondary and then tertiary leaders starting at twelve or so inches above the soil, then a space of a branch or two to go to #3. Takes a sharp eye to keep up, but eventually you'll get the hang of it. Also,
you'll discover how to treat different varieties through experimentation. For example, Black Plum is one of my favorites for snacking. I find I can just about allow those critters to run up to 6 or 8 leaders and every leader will still yield big! The problem becomes keeping up with the tieing and shaping where you finally end up "hanging"
rather than tieing back to the stake several of the many leaders.

So far as stake length out of the ground, here in zone 6 I find 6 ft to be ok. If they get so lush as to want more I just screw on an addition with my battery powered drill and a piece of 1/2 x 2 by maybe 30" long. Comes off easy for next years use too.

Larry

How you are growing your plants makes a big difference in what support you use.

Since you said in your other posts that you will be growing only determinate and compact varieties and will be growing them in containers then supporting your plants won't require any of the bigger or heavy duty staking or caging systems used by garden growers.

The simple 3 ring wire cages for tomatoes that are worthless for growing in the garden work okay in containers if you can tie them off to a deck rail or a stake in the ground - and they are all a small tomato plant needs. But a stake INside a container won't help much. it just falls over and takes the container with it.

There are lots of discussions here about how to stake, cage, CRW cages, Florida weave, or use cattle panels as support for tomato plants that a search will pull up for you and many of them have pictures of how to do it. But a small tomato plant in a container won't need anything as big as any of those.

Dave

I've tried staking individual plant-s as well as cages, some successfully, some not so good. Last year, I tried the Florida Weave and it was simply fantastic. Low cost (use half as many stakes) and very effective.

Mike

read: You're killin me with those beautiful mater pics! ;-)

That picture was from last year

on my brandy wines i use a cage /then when they get taller than the cage i use a weave seems to work good for me / i trellis the plants next to my shed it is very sturdy / on the plants on my back fence i use a cage then i use twine and tie them off the privacy fence / many ways to do it / then on my topsey turvey hehe just joking heheh

The best thing I have found is the Spiral Stand. I'm telling everyone I know about it because I love it so much.
No tying, no wire cages, and you can use it year to year.

Here is a link that might be useful: www.spiralstand.com

Daniele, funny that the only posts I can find from you on GW are about the spiral. ;)

I see you've been hitting Cottage, Potager, and now 3 threads here.

From everything I've read the spirals are too lightweight to offer good support and you have to prune the majority of the plant.

Here is a link that might be useful: tomato staking techniques evaluation