Read through your design. It should work. It may also depend on what kind of vines you will plant.

I use overhead trellis for heavy vines such as brandywine tomato and luffa gourd. Several years ago I tried electrical wires for vining tomato on one of my inground raised bed. I use leftover wires because wiring can get expensive. The weight never sagged a wire or eye. But it was just too much work for me with all the wires and strings once the toms get over 3-5 feet.

After moving on to concrete reinforcing wire CRW panels with excellent result, I've stayed with CRW. The set up is a four posts 2x4 with CRW panel top. The canopy is only 5 feet high for tomato (higher for luffa etc). Once constructed, I have done no work to the canopy other than moving it around when I rotate crops. Any strings or bamboo stick can help the vines get up the canopy, then they lay horizontally. The fruits will hang from the canope. This will never be as neat as your farmer neighbors, but it works for me.

I also use CRW panel vertically (supported by 2x4 posts or electrical conduit posts hammered into ground and fastened to raised bed) for ligher vines such as roma, juliet, etc. These are really space savers. I like this setting best because thin vines can weave through the openings, but haven not used these for the heavy thick vines like brandywines.

Thanks, thought about CRW or cattle panel but transportation is a problem with the panels being 16ft long. Plus 4 panels would have been $176, the wire, eyes, and tensioners were much less and we already had the 4x4 posts and 2x4 studs.

So when you used this sort of a system, where did you locate the eyes and tensioners?

I'm growing 1 determinate type (Glacier), the rest are indeterminate - German Johnson, Pink Brandywine, lots of speckled Roman pastes and Gardener's Delight cherries, some Cherokee Purple, and some hybrids my cousin gave me - 4th of July and a yellow plum of some kind (I don't know, that may be determinate too, it's already setting fruit in a 3-gal pot). 50 indeterminate and 10 determinate (I think). So far have dug 3 40-ft long trenches and filled 1 with amended soil (phew! All dug by hand b/c the rototiller kept hanging up on all the rocks). My plan was to allow 2ft in a 1ft deep x 1ft wide trench for each plant (ended up being a little wider - like 15-16" - b/c that's the width of the shovel). SFG says you can grow in 1x1x1 area if you trellis and sucker, I doubled that and am thinking that's probably not even enough but I don't think I can get DH to help me dig another row or 2.

Plus I want to plant some cukes. Peppers (45 and counting), squash, zucchini and pumpkins will have to go outside the trellis, will cage the peppers but let the squash and pumpkins sprawl. Thanks

Wow! Haven't bought CRW for a few years. Boy the price today is outragous! But then you have a BIG space. I only have a few raised beds.

Not sure about the question... I have the eyes and tensioners on the side of the post. A few at different height are needed for heavy vines. You're gonna enjoy tons of tomatos, literally :-)

Sorry, that price was for the 8 cattle panels I needed, not 4.

I got 14g wire 200ft for $9.99 and since I just twisted it back on itself at the eyes in the middle rows, 200ft should be enough for the 5 rows I now have (200ft total) since my dad dug out the outside of the posts with his excavator (he said "See, you don't have to put hours of hard work into it, all you need is a $45,000 machine!"). So the tomatoes will be much less crowded now.

I have to get some more eyes for the last row, each row has a tensioner at one end b/c all I bought was a pack of 5 (back when I thought I'd have 3 rows!) - price $4.49. Eyes (I forget how much for a 4-pack, couple of bucks?) are only on the ends, a guywire on each side of each end, wires running over the tops of the 2x4's. I'll take a pic when I finish the last of the wiring. I also need 4 good-sized stakes/tent pegs for the guywires. But total should be under $50 even if I have to buy twine (my dad bought sisal baling twine so that will rot, I need to find something else).

Now, if I only had enough leaf mold, compost, and UCG for those 2 new trenches...gotta stop at *bucks again and take the lawnmower out into the woods. No helping the compost situation, but I'll at least take some out (making sure I get worms) and put in each trench since the original soil and the screened topsoil I'm using have zero life in them.

Yup, a 45k machine and a nice dad ;-)

I don't think we live in the same state (or country?) cos wires are much more expensive here if I'm not mistaken.

ajsmama, did you mention how tall your trellis will be? It sounds like you'll have one horizontal wire for the whole hight. Did I misread? If that's the case, you will need twine for weaving as well as for vertical alignment until the vine reach the wire. Compared to my small amature garden, yours set up is professional. But there are many other experts on this forum who're experienced in larger scale planting. I suggest you post a picture as soon as you have something preliminary up, but before it's finalized. That way everyone can visualize and help out.

It may also be a good idea once you have the wires up for a small section, calculate the rough weight you expect for that area and do a weight test. This will be for all support including the eyes, tensioners (depend on what kind you use, these could be the first ones to go), and posts. That way you don't have to wait till the toms' all grown to find out. If the tensioners are not heavy duty enough, avoid them if they're not must haves. I had another set up one or two decades ago failed when the 4 (yes FOUR) toms were 12 ft and about 80 lbs in total weight. It was sad!

Yeah - we were lucky he came out back after tedding the hay near my cousin's house, his excavator was there since he's been expanding our pond.

The farmer near us doesn't weave, just trains them up a pair of strings (and suckers them). This is my first time growing so many - last year was 6 plants, this year is 60!

The 4x4's are sunk app. 18" into the ground (one on the SW corner might be closer to 12" - hit ledge). 14g wire, cheap plastic tensioners but since the wire runs through them if they fail they'll just crack and the wire will sag, but wire won't break. Not sure what the tensile strength of 14g wire is. Whole structure is just under 6ft tall (top of posts roughly 5'9 -5'10", plus 1.5" for a 2x4).

Thought of putting the determinates in the eastern-most row so they don't get shaded out, also that way I can pull them after harvest (Glacier is early) and plant something else there (maybe late crop of cukes?).

Indeterminates will go in the middle 3 rows (120ft for 50 plants), the 4x4's are 20ft apart so 20ft of wire will support 8 plants 2.5 ft apart? If that seems too close, I can plant some indeterminates in the outer rows since I don't need 80ft (1 east-facing, 1 west-facing row) for the Glaciers, peppers, cukes.

Thing is, I really don't know what to expect for weight. Brandywines get big but I hear aren't prolific, German Johnsons get big AND prolific (so make those the middle row or space them out?), but don't really know what to expect from Speckled Romans or Gardener's Delight - I know those cherry tomato plants can get loaded, but the fruit is so small, and if I sucker them (maybe I should hang some plastic netting from 1 wire for those?), how much weight will there be?

So your plants were 20lb each? What variety? 20lb for a 12ft tall plant doesn't seem much.

The only reason I passed statics and dynamics in college was b/c of my boyfriend - maybe I should ask my uncle (retired civil engineer) to do a load calculation but too many unknowns. If we knew the weight of each (suckered) plant with fruit (of course I'd be harvesting all season, not like determinate all the weight/load at once), it would help.

I'm taking a guess though that with 12-18" of rebar as stakes, the outer rows will take the weight of 16 20-lb plants. Of course, the inner rows are where I want to put the indeterminates (1 row of Speckled Romans, 1/2 row of G's Delight, 1/2 row of G. Johnson, 1 row of Brandywine). Those rows are only attached to the eyes, however, and the force on them would be lateral (but not direct, since the wires are run over the tops of the 2x4's before being run through the eyes on either end of the 40-ft row). The eyes in the middle rows might be the weakest points - rated for 95lbs, but supporting 40ft of German Johnsons and G. Delight might rip them right out of the 2x4's?

Gee, maybe I should have married the mechanical engineer and not the computer geek!

The four toms I lost were brandywine I think. I only grow the common varieties such as brandywine, etc so can't speat to other kinds. Maybe others who're more experienced in your variety can speak to that.

You're right, the weight will be lateral if your trellis is high enough and the toms don't wrap over the top. The pull weight depends on wind, etc. My set up was only 4 ft, so the toms wrapped over and hung on the top.

Funny thing is I never had a wire broken on me, but the supporting hardwares did fail. Had to replace the tensioners and reattach the eyes a few times (the terminal ones on both end). Oh and I found a (horizontal) wire at the bottom helped in supportting the vertical strings.

I've seen commercial set up like your design. Also saw pictures on this forum for similar set up, but no close ups. Sounds like work. But the harvest will be so sweet! Can't wait to see your trellis.

BTW I AM a computer geek woman. Ouch! Sniff sniff.

No offense - I was a EE in a former life ;-). Just this one instance when it would be handy to have an ME around instead of a CISSP.

Haven't decided on/found string for verticals yet, but thinking of burying them when I transplant? The farmer just ties his 2 pieces of baling twine together at the bottom and loops them around the young plant, then keeps tucking the stem (think he might keep 2 vines going?) in between as it gets taller.

I use either thick natural jute twine, or the thin nylon type for vertical. If you don't expect gusty wind, there's probably no need to bury the vertical. The wind blew off lamp post and break temp glass windows around here so I added another horizontal wire at the bottom to secure them.

Looks like this week your high may be 10-20 degree warmer than us and you have a shorter season so it's perfect time to move the toms out. Better start soon. I only planted 16 toms this year and had to space them out three weekend so not to hurt my back. Have fun with 60 :-)

There're so much info on the web I'm sure you've done a lot of research already. But here's a simple video I like about stringing and suckering toms:

Here is a link that might be useful: How to string and sucker tomato plants

The farmer's wife is market master and she called me about my insurance certificate, I asked about baling twine and they said it should last 1 season here outside. Didn't get started today, so will do it tomorrow AM (probably take me 3 AMs to get all the plants out, over 100 tomatoes and peppers). Then have to plant the seeds for other stuff - going to be a busy week!

Off to TSC to get grounding rods for electric fence and check out baling twine (I don't know if I should ask my dad to take 800ft+ out of the baler when he still has 2 more fields to hay this month - might get 3 cuttings this year). I'm going with the natural instead of the poly since whatever I don't use, we can use in the baler later.

Thanks for the link - I knew about no suckering above the top blossoms, but didn't know to look for a sucker *with* blossoms and main stem w/o them! I have already suckered (and taken blossoms off) the largest plants, hope I didn't do that by mistake - or sucker a det type (I don't know what my cousin gave me, but we'll see).

Another good thing about natural twines for tomato is they're easily disposable. Just throw them into the compost pile. Whatever you've suckered off the toms, I'm sure they'll recover once they take off after transplanting. Good luck!

Here are some pix of the setup. Was going to plant today but looks like drainage problems (see pix on Soil forum) so might just get about half the plants in. Some areas are still soggy from over 1" of rain last night, showers expected this w/e so I don't want them to drown - may plant cukes in those areas to use the trellis, or just don't use at all unless I can figure out how to get it to drain better (lots more sand, mounded instead of trenched?).

On the other hand, plants might do better in those areas if this July is as dry as last year!

Soggy end of middle trench (actually, about 15 ft out of 40 is like this!)

{{gwi:292508}}

How long does it take for that area to drain off?

I don't know - I knew that one area took longer to drain (was soft but no standing water after a VERY rainy April/May) before we started digging. This is the first hard rain we've had since we dug the trenches, more showers to come this weekend so might take a while to drain even if it's not much more.

There're different theories about how long soil should drin/dry off for planting. Each has their own merrit depending on what kind of vegetation will be planted, and the environment. For the drainage issue, you may want to start a new thread under the Vegetable Forum. Because people are not familiar with your environment, some may be curious as to how many hours does it take for the trench to drain after you provide managed irrigation, and/or how much rain you expect from a regular rainfull in the season. For example, on our hill, I'd preserve the rain water however I can. But in a wet area, a runoff is a must to prevent standing water. It all depends.

The trellis looks good. Next! :-)

ajsmama,

Do you have any updated photos of your overhead trellis - with the plants in place? DH is interested for 2012 season as our San Marzano grow 8-9 feet tall then top the supports and grow back down another 5-6 feet. If your overhead trellis works DH plans to build one for us. Photos??

Thanks,
DL

Photos?? Please.......

Sorry, no pix from last year, the plants lasted about 2 months (planted in mid-June when it dried out a bit, put in rain barrel soaker hose and hauled water in barrels in back of truck to connect to in July, then Irene wiped them out in August).

I'm planting edamame there this year since I can put netting around attached to the outside wires (as I found last year when the turkeys were taking a bite of of each tomato).

I was pruning to a single stem and just winding it around a piece of baling twine hanging down from the wire. I guess you could use a second piece to train the stem going down, but mine never got that tall. I did use a second piece for a second stem on some plants. HTH