O.K. You've tried every method for growing tomatoes on the planet. Me too. Well you can high five whoever is closest to you right now, because YOUR SEARCH HAS FINALLY ENDED!
Dear Florida Weave, You suck. Dear Tomato Cage, You suck. Dear Weird Spiraly Wire thing, You super-suck.
Dear String Method, I love you with all of my heart. You do not, nor will you ever suck. Sincerely, Everyone who has ever tried you.
Don't know about the string method? You can read all about it in my first post on the string method and how to do it.
Before I go on and on and on and on and on and on about how if you grow tomatoes you shouldn't bother with any other support system than the string method, let's have a quick reminder of what an heirloom tomato looks like when left to its own devices by the month of August.
So, yeah. Impressive for sure. Also space sucking, a little bit tangled and frightening to children, pets and any adult who doesn't have some sort of martial arts training.
I remember sticking my head in this plant to pick a tomato and thinking ... well here goes ... this is why people buy life insurance ... then hoping I'd be able to pop back out in the next 5 minutes before some sort of tomato vine strangulation occurred.
The string method on the other hand ... is a work of art. And you get the same amount of tomatoes because the plant isn't spending all its energy on creating miles and miles of stems and leaves sticking out every which way.
This is how a tomato plant approximately the same age looks in my yard this year. LOOK AT IT!
The string method is just a matter of planting a tomato, pruning out all the suckers leaving only the one main stem, and wrapping that stem as it grows around a string. In this case the string is attached to a screw at the top of my fence. Here are all the details in case you missed it the first time around when I talked about it in the spring.
Once the vine reaches the top of the string you can either continue the string horizontally or you can drop the whole plant down (you can see there are a couple of feet of bare stem at the bottom) by loosening the string, and letting it climb up again.
The reason the stem is bare at the bottom is because after your tomato has set fruit you remove all the leaves underneath that first fruit set. Once you pick that fruit, you remove all the leaves from below the next fruit set. And so on. You eventually end up with a lot of bare stem.
I tried the string method at my house on a whim to see how it would work against a fence but the main reason I tried it was for my community garden to save space and work. In the spring when the seedlings were about 18" high, I attached my string and started training them.
Now the tomatoes have made their way almost to the top of the string.
And the plants and fruit are PERFECT.
There was no disease at all because there's so much air flowing between the plants to keep the leaves dry. Since you pinch off all the leaves below the fruit nothing is near the ground to get disease splashed up on it when it rains.
It's tomato Narnia. Actually, since I'm from the 80's it's tomato Nirvana.
There's exactly enough greenery to produce nice tomatoes but not so much that the fruit is shaded. Every tomato gets plenty of light and air.
Everything grows so perfectly and in order that it's almost bizarre.
All in a single row up the vine you have ripe tomatoes at the bottom with cluster after cluster above them in various stages of growing and ripening.
And not a single plant looks as though it's going to reach out and wrestle you to the ground.
Not all experiments in the garden turn out this well. Not all experiments in the kitchen turn out well. Or decorating, DIY, fix it, hairstyle or makeup experiments.
But for every contouring experiment that makes you look like a paint by number, or every marshmallow/potato/fish salad that makes you sick, there's a string method.
So keep experimenting and learning and trying. It ain't that hard. Any of it.
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Wow! I think I may try this method for my garden this year. I have limited space and lots to plant including various varieties of heirloom tomatoes! Thank you for this post
Sorry I can't seen to upload the siamese photo but it is on Pinterest mutant vegetation. I saved the seeds but the new plants produced normal offspring!
Dear Tomato-eaters;
I too have done the string method and got good harvests. One year I brought two potted mature tomato plants from my outdoor sunroom to my south facing bedroom window. I used string and bamboo poles making a large tresle. To my surprise one continued growing for 2 seasons! It even produced a siamese tomato. See photo.....
Wow! Mustta been sad when it finally died, lol. ~ karen!
Love this great info. In a different tomato post, you mentioned the leaves of the tomato plant give the tomatoes their sweetness. Did you notice a lessening in the sweetness level of this string method that has much less leafing?
Hi Liz! Excellent question! It isn't a problem because the plant isn't trying to make as many tomatoes. So the number of leaves to the # of tomatoes is still generally the same, therefore the sweetness is the same. :) ~ karen!
In a different tomato post, you mentioned the leaves give the tomatoes there sweetness. Did this method seem to cut down on the sweetness level of your string tomatoes with the much less leafing?
I live in Guernsey in the Channel Islands which are situated in the English Channel.
Famous for its tomatoes, Island growers have tied their tomatoes with string for well in excess of a century. This enabled the growers to grow tomatoes up to 23 feet long of more recent years, easily producing crops of 20+ pounds per plant. I myself grew many thousands of plants this way.
You know, when I don't have a photo, I invariably hit the "Choose file" button.
When I do have a photo, and intend to add it, I hit the "post comment" by mistake.
Ugh. Make it stop! Here's the pic.
I can't quite tell how big that pot is but I have a hunch it should be bigger. Bigger the pot, the more compost/nutrients it can hold the better the plant will grow. If you can't fit a bigger pot make sure to add compost to the top of the soil every 2 weeks or something. Even Miracle Grow is great. (yeah, I know everyone boooos Miracle Grow, but it's a great product) Keep me updated on the progress!! ~ karen
Those pots (three of them--but the other two are determinate) are 16 inches across, which is one inch bigger than last year's tomato plant got. It grew like nuts. I just went out and checked. Rainstorm overnight. No leaf curl. The stem where I cut off about 30% of the plant/leaves is high and dry.
I do see that I need to move one of those upper tie-offs about a foot to the right, to provide enough room for all the amazing cherry tomatoes that I'm going to get.
I'm having more fun with this already. And I'm really looking forward to the plants not occupying the ENTIRE stairwell and attacking visitors.
Alrighty then. I said I would try it this year and here we are. I only purchased one indeterminate tomato this year. It's a cherry tomato. I figure I can pick the little buggers, even at 8-9 feet out. All my plants are in my stairwell this year, so I put the cherry-T at the bottom of the stairs to give it max headroom.
Since I remembered a bit late, it has will have two leads, but that's ok. Cherry-ts are scrawny plants and tiny fruit. There was a third, so I cut off the smallest and trained the other two.
Very excited, Karen!
I have read both posts about this and plan to try it. However, I also grow cherry tomatoes and they seem to get crazy than my larger versions. Does this method work on them as well?
Hi Angela! Yes it does work with cherry tomatoes. I know they DO go crazy don't they? I also espaliered a lot of cherry tomato plants last year and it worked great. You just have to be vigilant about taking out suckers and keeping only 1-2 leaders in both techniques. ~ karen!
How on earth did you do the espaliered with cherries? I mean I know the definition is to train it to go flat, but how?
If they're getting so much sun how do you prevent sunspot? I have this problem when they get too much light. Thanks!
Hi Manette! I'm not sure what you mean by sunspot. :) Do you mean sun scorch on the leaves, where they get spots on them? That only happens to seedlings when they haven't been properly hardened off. Something similar looking can also happen if you remove too many leaves all at once when thinning them. It shocks the plant and basically makes it unhealthy and unable to heal itself. Also if large leaves are removed that were previously shading newer, young leaves the loss of shade can cause the newer leaves to burn. So, this is a really long way of saying that chances are it isn't too much sun that's causing the sun scorch, it's probably one of the reasons I've stated, lol. ~ karen!
How tall is not the main concern; how many tomatoes and pounds per plant?
I'm going to try this method for my heirlooms-- so many branches and leaves this year, and they often outgrow their 6ish foot stake. Also mine were too close this year--WHAT WAS THE SPACING YOU USED BETWEEN PLANTS IN THE COMMUNITY GARDEN?
Just recently found your blog and love it. Thanks for all your fun and well researched solutions!
We didn't do this but I certainly pruned off a ton of leaves on the cherry tomatoes. And nothing bad happened...actually lots of good happened. I'm going to try this next year if I can. If you're ever at the Royal Winter Fair (if they have this particular exhibit again) they showed a hydroponic string thing and it was amazing!
Show off !!! Just kidding babe. You always have great ideas and instructions. I envy you having such a fantastic community plot to grow. I have been trying for years to get approval from my HOA to have a community garden for us residents. (Any ideas how to make that happen?) You're my super-hero of doing all things splendidly. Keep showing off...
I have got to try this next year. My grape tomato plant is out of control.
Please send a reminder next May or June. Or I will forget all about it.
Thanks!
I definitely need to do this! One problem, though - I kinda suck at pruning ANYTHING. Thankfully, however, I have a solution!
Karen . . . please come to Oregon next spring and we'll put you up on our "urban farm" for a few days and you can show me how to prune the tomatoes to the string. Whaddaya think? :)
You'll want to be careful, though, or you'll go home with a goat or two given that chickens are the gateway drug to goats.
Nicole
Absolute GENIUS! You've given me the strength to give it one more go!
My Amish neighbor raises tomatoes in his hoop houses. Each plant, spaced 1 foot apart in rows, has a string to climb. The strings are tied at the top to the inner framework. The vines are attached to the strings using clips. http://www.duboisag.com/en/tomato-clips.html If you have several hundred vines the clips save a great deal of time.
I will try this too next year. We had great weather for maters -and now I have what looks like the Little Shop of Horrors in my back garden. I thought I heard a "feed me!" out there this morning! but I did get a ton of tomatoes. I planted San Marzanos from seed, and they rocked!
Seriously, I am putting all my tomato plants in the stairwell next summer. The stairwell, with someone controlled "squirrel access." With all tomatoes reachable by going to the walk about the stairwell or walking up the stairs. I want my tomato plants to look like yours next summer!