Tomato bed sqft garden question

10 years ago

Hello I have been square foot gardening for 4 years now. Great sucess! I want to move my beds around this year and was wondering how a 4x10 bed full of tomatoes spaced at 1 per 2sqft would do on a trellis. I usually trellis 8 tomatoes on 8squares in the back of a bed, and plant rest with shorter veggies. But would like to plant my tomatoes in a bed that I haven't had any tomatoes in before, so they would need to be all together. I was hoping the extra sqft per plant would allow for sun and circulation. Any thoughts?

Featured Answer

rgreen48

10 years ago

You're looking to plant the entire bed with tomatoes? So, you would need a trellis to go down each 'row'. I plant tomatoes in beds in that fashion, but I don't use trellises. Instead, I put a cage around every other plant. That way, the only unsupported sections are every other one at the edges and tying wire does just fine to patch those areas.

As far as space, I don't do the math, I just space closely based upon experience. Last year I squeezed 27 plants into a 4' x 14' bed using 3 deep by 9 across the East/West length. As I said, cages were put around every other plant in a checkerboard pattern.

One thing you do have to be conscious of in such a circumstance is air circulation. Creating a 4' x 10' block of tomatoes is a haven for disease. You may have to prune for air flow. However, this depends a lot on your climate, not just your zone. A humid, rainy climate is going to have a more difficult time with disease.

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Comments (9)

chinmae77
Original Author
10 years ago
I should add that the trellis orientation would be E/W I live in zone 7a and my garden gets near dawn to dusk sun except edges at dawn and dusk.
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chinmae77
Original Author
10 years ago
Yeah it would be a lot of trellis, but I have plenty from previous years. maybe I will just do 16 plants along the exterior of 3 sides North/East/West sides- so 16ft of trellis and then plant rest with lettuce/spinach may be better than filling bed entirely... That would be down from my 24 indeterminates previous years. May be a bit more selfish with my tomatoes this year... But yeah I am a bit worried about airflow and sunlight. Thanks for your thoughts.
suznjn
10 years ago
I have five 4x6 beds, one of which is exclusively for my Roma Tomatoes (I make a LOT of sauce!!). I plant them every other square, laying the stem down in the vacant square and bending the plant up in the growing square to encourage root growth and strong stems. That gives me 8 plants, which are staked and have a vacant square on all sides to allow for airflow and light. And I can still reach all the plants without problem.

Using this method, your 4x10 bed would hold 20 plants, close to your original goal.
chinmae77
Original Author
10 years ago
We can't get enough tomatoes! Haven't made sauce yet though. Do you find that any of your plants are puny, especially the ones on the north side of your garden?
paula_b_gardener 5b_ON
10 years ago
I grow 27 tomatoes in a 4' x 10' bed. I take off all new leaders and leave only one main stem. My DH also made a frame around the entire bed and I use baling twine to train the plants to grow up.
applemum
10 years ago
paula I assume you prune your tomatoes so hard to increase production? I am trying to picture one main stem, in my minds eye I only see one set of flowers if you have taken off all side branches, I must be missing something.
paula_b_gardener 5b_ON
10 years ago
You don't take off all of the side branches, just the suckers so that the energy is concentrated on growing the main tomatoes well. I remove all of the lower branches below the next truss of tomatoes to prevent blight and to make sure the plants have good air circulation.

The following photo was taken in September after they had been producing for a long time already. As you can see, production was good.
applemum
10 years ago
Wow! I definitely need a primer on how to help tomatoes produce fruit!!