Here's a couple o pics:

Anything else I can do, such as spraying? I noticed a LOT of bugs in under everything, still lots of fruit sitting in mud. A few tomatoes have insect holes already, although most looks really good if it can make it to the break point I can harvest quick.

What about spraying with mild dish soap dilute, and water rinse?

I think you should clean THOROUGHLY the little "jungle" you have there.

After that, post pictures - preferably taken during the day.

Did you mulch / fungicide ?

Not sure what else to "clean". I spent a lot of time weeding continuously - everything you see in there is pure tomato. As a new garden, The only mulch I had available to use was cardboard. I installed a trellis before planting, but didn't relalize the plants were growing along the ground and rooting down. The plants were quite compact until recently, so there wasn't really much to weave into the frame upwards anyways before. Now they're starting to get some length, but the stems are putting roots in the ground and getting brittle if I try to force them up through the frame, I've already broken several branches with lots of tomatoes on them and they're garbage now. There isn't that much dead foliage in there – most of what you see is still healthy and it has flowers and fruit on it. The only pruning I can really do is to hack off perfectly good vines with green tomatoes and try to thin it out.

Is that a good answer here?

Haven't got into sprays or chemicals of any kind yet.

I asked previously about diluted dish soap in a spray bottle because I've use that combination with great success last year on peppers and assorted fruit trees to get rid of pests big and small. I would rinse it off immediately with freshwater, and I didn't worry about getting poisoned in the produce or something. Never tried it on tomatoes.

By "clean" I mean something like this - mulch, fungicide, little pruning, the WHOLE nine yards...

Do you know what varieties you grew? If so, you could find out if they are determinant or indeterminant. If the latter, they will grow to about 7' tall, in which case, I would suggest installing some very tall posts at either end of the rows and one or two in the middle. You would the have some choices. You could construct a bar on top so that you can tie strings from it and the vines can be wound around the strings.

Another idea would be to do the Florida Wave where you would place strings horizontally, every 6 inches to keep them in check.

If neither of those ideas appeal, you could put stakes in and tie the plants, but they would probably need to be very tall stakes.

Some people just let their plants sprawl but, as you have found out, they tend to get dirty and it is difficult to get in there to pick the tomatoes!

Good luck!

Linda

Thanks Linda. May not be able to see it in the photo, but before planting I installed all the vertical parts of the trellis system with strong guy wires into the ground so it's quite secure. I've put long sticks horizontally, but as noted above it's proving difficult to weave the plants through them without breaking. A variation of your Florida weave idea may work very well here. I'll give it a try.

Do any of those homemade preventatives, such as garlic or hot pepper spray, work well for tomato pests and fungus?

Edit: forgot to add these are all the vine type that get big. Mostly Momotaro tomatoes. One cherry tomato in there which is quite easy to work with.

Try your weaving before watering if you can. Apparently, after the plants have been watered the stems are more likely to break.

Hot pepper spray would work for insects.

Some people spray with copper, milk, or even diluted bleach for fungus. The brand used here is Daconil.

Linda

I like the way you are going with that. Maybe a little higher and more spread out next year? I always thought tomatoes were happier sprawling.

I used Copper Fungicide and I was VERY happy.

I like it. I let my tomatoes sprawl a little bit mostly because I don't have a lot of time to fuss with them. I lose a few tomatoes but most turn out fine. You could try making some small cylinders or arches out of chicken wire and slide them underneath the vines here and there to keep them off the ground, that is what I do, although, I use pre-made gopher baskets I have laying around. Anyway, an interesting experiment. One thing you need to watch out for is too hot of sun on the tomatoes. When the vines sprawl, the tomatoes can be exposed to hot sun and that ruins the tomato and it will stop ripening and rot on the vine. If you have exposed tomatoes cover them with some kind of netting or shade cloth.

I had some extra plants and let them sprawl.

They look good so far.

Great idea Rhoder, I'll look into wire roles.

Good ground, my cherry tomatoes basically ended up sprawling last year, and while I did lose a few low ones to rot, most were perfect and we had more tomatoes than we could possibly eat all summer. Ended up freezing bags of them for tomato sauce (which didn't work well, lol).