Hi Zeedman. Welcome to the tomato forum. Years ago when I was growing beens have learn a lot from you. Thanks.

About your question, unfortunately I cannot offer a worthy suggestion. But as far as I understand, tomato plants are sprawler by nature . So growing against trellis you should train and tie them, especially if the trellis is vertical.

Stand by for more expert advice.

Sey

It sounds like you are referring to potato-leaf tomatoes. My potato leaf tomato that was supposed to be Black Krim had leaves almost 10 inches long! Many tomatoes are listed by the leaf type, regular leaf or potato leaf. If this is what you mean, you would then pick varieties to grow based on RL or PL.

"varieties with long, flexible leaves are the easiest to train. "

Hi zeedman,

Welcome to the tomato place and please come back often to share what you're up to. Sounds very interesting and I'd love to see a snapshot :-)

I'm not sure what you are really meaning, but I think you may be after the tomatoes that have "epinastic" leaves: those whose leaves weep downward like the willows - they are usually longer and more flexible (and are frequently described as "wispy"). They tend to be very easy to train, or should I say manipulate, but they haven't much grip if you know what I mean.

This leaf variant is typically found in elongated tomatoes - many heart shaped and some pastes, especially the longer fruited ones. I grew Jersey Devil and Speckled Roman (did very well) this time around among others and both had that characteristic. SR was longer and more fragile and flexible looking; JD was a bit tougher, but both fit this type of which there are many dozens such as Opalka which for me is basically a larger version of JD, and both are even suitable for fresh eating to me.

This leaf type generally has leaflets much longer than wide, and leaves also can be fairly long and flexible due to their nature.

You can find a listing of many here in Tatiana's Tomatobase:

Wispy (epinastic-leaved) tomato varieties

The tomato leaves are compound so the set of leaflets growing out of the stem on one petiole is one leaf and the little guys are the leaflets in the sense I used the word "leaf".

Hope that helps.

PC

"... I'm not sure what you are really meaning, but I think you may be after
the tomatoes that have "epinastic" leaves: those whose leaves weep
downward like the willows - they are usually longer and more flexible
(and are frequently described as "wispy")."

Thank you, PC, for the info & the link. Now that I know the proper terminology, that appears to be the reference I was searching for. Fortunately, the weeping trait seems to suit my preferences, since I prefer many of the elongated pastes & heart-shaped tomatoes. That those varieties are also best suited to my method of trellising is just icing on the cake.

Not surprisingly, I already grow (or have grown) quite a few of the tomatoes listed in that link... now it appears that I have many more years of trials to do. Should be fun. ;-)

I trellis all of my indeterminate tomatoes, but do so without ties, weaving the plants in & out of a string lattice (which is fundamentally the same trellising technique I use for beans). For those with longer leaves, I can wrap the leaves several times around the horizontal strings to hold the stem in place... the leaf will harden to make a firm grip. Several of the shorter-leaved varieties I am growing this year resist such leaf training, but I can still weave the stems into the lattice, and the leaves will then bend downward over the strings & strengthen. I'll try to post a photo soon. The PL varieties are the most difficult to train for me, since they have more rigid stems & the leaves are comparatively inflexible.