I've never tried, but have heard that the Florida weave trellis works well. Might be worth a google search. Or you might need sturdier cages--many gardeners use cattle panels as tomato cages which are very sturdy.

I used a tripod of stakes for all my tomatoes including my San Marzanos. I bought cheap 8 foot furring strips from home depot ($1 each) and tied them together at the top to make a tripod shape and tied the branches to the 3 sides. Note Amish Paste tomato outperformed SM by 50% in terms of volume of fruit. Same growing conditions, same staking method. Amish Paste almost 10 pds per plant, SM less than 5 pds per plant. There is still fruit on vine so not final counts for the year. SM grew like a weed and foliage needed to be reduced several times to control growth and to enable it to focus on fruit production.

Garden in July while stakes are still visible

Garden in August

I want to try Amish paste, but it has virtually no disease resistance.

How about San Marzano Redorta?

Or 'Tiren' which appears to be a SM based hybrid with modern disease resistance and productivity?

Why compare indt to det varieties? A better comparison for Amish Paste would be Super Marzano, an Indt variety. Lately I prefer Grandero or Pozzano or Gremlin as better producing indt paste varieties.

I thought Amish paste was determinate.

Of all the roma tomatoes I've grown, Pompeii is my favorite. No disease, tons of 4-5" fruit. My caging system is not ideal (I have those square 5' cages), but it's what I bought 15 years ago so I'll use those until they break. I don't prune; the tomatoes grow taller than the cages and then flop over the top.

Amish Paste like over 95% of heirloom tomato varieties is indeterminate. The figure may even be closer to 99%.

As far as support for indeterminate varieties I won't claim to have the solution for everyone but my stringline support in a high tunnel is the closest thing to ideal as I've ever seen or heard about. Picking fruit is almost always within reach and plants are not Unpruned which equals unsightly, impenetrable, disease wracked tangle.

"My determinate paste tomatoes outgrew their cages somewhat, but did ok in them."

All depends on what you used for cages. If you browse through the 100s of cages discussions on the Growing Tomatoes forum here you'll find that the consensus is the 3 or 4 ring things are essentially worthless. CRW cages, if using cages, are the most commonly recommended.

"Yet, staking and pruning reduces yield, (and increases size).."

Reduces yield per plant, yes. Increases size? Highly debated and research shows only a marginal increase in some beefsteak type varieties.

Dave

So, Dave, are you an advocate of the CRW cages or another support method?

Following this thread.

I will be growing Amish Paste next year as my San Marzano were a huge disappointment. I got onebatch of beautiful Paste size tomatoes and the rest were tiny and the plant had terrible BER.

Curious how you all support other tomatoes too. My Hungarian heart got to about 9 feet but I wasn't able to properly support it. Would have been nice to be able to have it keep climbing.

Great pics of the supports.

Babushka

wow what are your beds made of? cedar? great looking.

Hubby screwed together two tobacco stick(from flea mkt find) and drilled holes in top and wired together. Unfortuntaly this season, I took them apart because I thought I didnt have enough sort ,regular sized ones, for my SP in containers..

curious are those small clay or plastic flower pots on top of your tripods.

oh what is that purple plants in your tomato beds ? basil ? Great ideas there too thanks for sharing