Living tomato supports

Has anyone experimented with using living plants to support your tomatoes? This year my tomatoes, quinoa plants and scarlet runner beans fused into a big, strong tangle of plants and seemed to be holding each other up. I'd love to have an easy, no-work way to let nature take care of supporting my tomatoes.

Sorry, I see that this landed in the wrong forum, but I can't figure out how to move it myself.

Hey, Honor Marie, welcome to permies!

I generally haven't found anything that works except for tying my tomatoes to stakes with twine, but this year I do have one tall spindly plant that's being held up pretty well by the tub full of water chestnut reeds next to it. However it's causing a lot of breakage to the water chestnut stems, so I'm not sure this is a good solution.

The last two years, I have tried to get tomatoes to use sunflowers for supports, but they just don't seem to like each other.

I pose the following question - Why do tomatoes need to be staked? I wonder if tomato staking has roots in how nature does it, or if it was something contrived to grow tomatoes using conventional gardening practices of monocultures and bare soil.

The last three years I have not used any support for my tomatoes and gotten rather good harvests. Especially from my tomatoes on my pseudo hugelculture/polyculture raised beds. I have lost a few that were in contact with the ground, but I would say less than 10%.

My tomatoes have been a collection of volunteers and heirloom varieties, so maybe they are less fussy about being staked. I also haven't done any irrigation. I am not a tomato connoisseur, but I have shared a bunch of them with other folks who have loved them, and asked for more.

I like that question about why they need to be staked. I'm watching this topic now!

I can't answer why they need to be staked, but I can only share the results of my own experiment.

This year I had 101 tomato plants. I had 9 varieties with quantities ranging from 10-13 of each. The varieties were all heirloom, and all from Baker Creek Seeds (who comes with my highest recommendation, by the way). For about half the plants I built tomato cages from a roll of 4ft tall welded wire. The other half I decided to let grow naturally with no stakes or cages. I planted them in rows with 20" spacing.

The tomatoes in cages grew tall and healthy, and produced between 5 and 12 pounds of fruit on each plant, depending on the variety. I probably could have gotten more, but I didn't prune at all and with all the rain we got this summer I had a lot of rot on the bottoms of the plants. Plus, I've got chickens and pigs that are happy to eat rotten tomatoes.

The tomato plants without cages flowered and fruited fine, but I lost nearly every single tomato to rot. I was lucky if I got just a single tomato from a plant. I had straw mulch to keep the tomatoes from out of the mud, but it was so dang wet all summer and everything rotted. Also, with my nice clean row garden (I know, not very permaculure!) the plants were sprawled all up in the walkways, which was annoying. I vowed to never have a plant that wasn't staked or caged ever again in a traditional garden. If I try it again, it will be in my future food forest.

I read a book called "Eating on the Wild Side" by Jo Robinson, which is partly about the history of food plants. Robinson says that tomatoes were very small fruits until they were domesticated. I would imagine those wild tomatoes did fine without stakes.

I've noticed I can get away with a lot less fussy staking when I grow cherry tomatoes, so maybe the solution for us lazy stakers is just to grow smaller varieties. Robinson says that smaller tomatoes are healthier anyway (more lycopene.)

When I was a child, we used to go to the tomato fields in the next valley over and pick tomatoes for canning. The tomatoes were grown sprawling on the ground.

I have grown tomatoes that way my whole life. They grow just fine without being staked IN MY DRY CLIMATE.

I save my own seeds, and am still growing the descendants of the variety that I was picking as a child. A couple years ago I trialed a bunch of new varieties. I noticed that their fruits sit heavy on the ground and are more likely to rot. My tomatoes have an arching trait to the stems, and thick stems, which keeps the tomatoes out of the dirt so they are less likely to rot. I have been inadvertently selecting for tomatoes that don't rot when grown sprawling, and so have my neighbors since before I was born.

I believe that by the time a tomato gets the slightest blush of color to it, that it has stopped receiving nutrients from the plant. So I pick at first blush, and let fruits ripen on a table. That greatly increases the percentage of #1 fruit that I am able to harvest. If I wait till they are dead ripe in the field then the pests and micro-organisms have a feast. I can't tell a difference in taste.

- These are plum tomato or slightly bigger -sized tomatoes for the purpose of a growing experiment these were supported even higher,

I just could not find a better picture to post ! Link below :


http://www.groasis.com/images/phocagallery/thumbs/phoca_thumb_m_m_dscn13105.jpg


Experimental growth - all food given to food pantries research by Groasis vegetable at you tube ! For the Crafts ! Big AL

everybody has seen the green topsy turvy tomato "planter" at walmart or biglots. that doesnt need a cage.

I don't know if it would actually work, but I have okra and tomatoes planted in the same bed this year and those okra plants look like they would maybe support some tomato vines. They are certainly pretty tough, and standing about 5 feet tall right now, though I think the tomatoes would try to smother them if they were mixed (presently the tomato plants are trellised along the north side of the bed). Maybe find a cherry tomato variety that doesn't grow so large (a 'patio' type), and that would have the best chance of success?

Getting away from annuals may be the best bet. I could really envision a tomato growing up into a a pine tree or over a dogwood or plum thicket...though I have to say, I've never actually seen it.

I'm growing tomatoes in the ground for the first time, having only grown them in pots or grow bags in the past. Compared to the spindly, anaemic things I've had before these look fantastic.

I have them planted on the sunny side of a row of globe artichokes, which are providing some support. If I were fussy I might get some twine and actually tie them up, but they are doing pretty well as they are. No fruit has ripened yet, but there is no sign of rot on the plants despite a damp climate.

I grow current tomatoes in my asparagus beds and let them scramble up through my asparagus tops so I can get a second crop out of my asparagus beds. The presence of the tomatoes has no adverse effect on the asparagus yields. Also underplant strawberries in the asparagus beds.

I didn't mean to hijack the original question, so I observed my tomatoes a bit and took some pictures to share...

Here is a pic of a tomato plant using pokeweed as a living support:


Here are some unsupported tomatoes growing at ground level:


You can't really see any of the tomatoes from a distance:


The closer you get, and red starts to show through:


They aren't completely on the ground, but they are within inches of the ground:


Found some volunteer cherry tomatoes doing the same thing:


Here is about a quarter of the harvest so far:


I noticed something interesting, any tomatoes that were on trellises are still green:


More green ones on a trellis:


Third and final trellis:


A few observations:
1. Pokeweed seems to work fine as a living tomato support.
2. Sunflowers didn't work for me as tomato supports.
3. The tomatoes rambling along the ground ripen faster that those on trellises.
4. My sample was small, and mostly just a grab bag of heirloom tomato plants I started this winter, stuck in the ground, and then ignored until harvest.
5. The tomatoes rambling near the ground were on smallish raised beds with some wood buried in them - roughly 3 years old and lots of polyculture.

Where I live in southern Ohio a big part of the staking of tomatoes is all about air flow.
I have grown tomatoes on utility fencing and t-posts many times.
When I over plant and have too dense of tomato vines I get a lot of rot.
I get similar results when they grow along the ground.
A key seems to be temperature and how long high moisture conditions exist on the skin of the tomato or leaf.
Good air flow seems to reduce the period of high moisture.

It seems that maintaining moisture levels in soil prevents a number of tomato issues.
You want good drainage and do not want major fluctuations in soil moisture because it can lead to tomato cracking.

Above ground you really want conditions that promote dry tomatoes and leaves.

So in my area,staked raised beds or tubs, along with drip irrigation seems to be the ticket.

Well, if you have the space in your garden you DO NOT have to stake your tomatoes.
Fields of tomatoes - mass production - never has staked tomatoes that I know of.
But, YES, I do support mine with the wire cones type of support.
That works pretty good for me, but those are also a great expense in your gardening budget.

One thing that might help some for canning expenses. Check out your local 'thrift' stores for jars.
I see them on sale occasionally. In fact, I came back home to get some bucks to buy some and the had already disappeared by the time I had returned to the store.

Also, if you buy new lids, rings, rubber seals, etc. try to buy in bulk and prices per piece go down.

I have only grown cherry tomatoes for a few years, and have volunteers every year. They tend to be very leggy and I do use sunflowers as supports. I find the sunflowers are full of carpenter ants until they flower, then they are full of bees, mainly bumble bees. Beeing I prefer bees to getting nipped by ants, I leave them to flower, never having experimented with lopping heads.

After a heavy rain and all the sunflowers open, the ants disappear for good, and that's when I attach tomatoes.

I string the tomatos to the sunflowers, which are about a foot or 2 away and entwine tomatoes to each other through the spaces.

If my sunflowers are blocking the sun from the tomatoes, I transplant them during that heavy shower, and they transplant successfully and open a day or 2 layer. Or, if I had to take out a crowd, I do this during an earlier downpour: the ants don't stay for the shower. I can arrange some branches teepee style, tie at the top, lay the sunflowers against the teepee, and they will transplant well. It isn't necessary to add soil: just some debris and water well for a couple weeks.

I also grow Matt's wild cherry tomatos (a cross, with a Mexican wild drought resistant tomato, and I am very excited about Joseph lofthouse's project and hopefully future offerings).

Matt's are available online, and for my environment, fall planting damaged tomatos, they produce anything from a small free standing plant, with two big handfuls of green cherry tomatos, up to plants big enough to stake with those silly wire cages that are too small for regular tomatos. I have about 30 free road salvaged cages that get used.

I am in 4a, surrounded by mixed forest, humid, 600', in a valley, and don't have a lot of places with full days of sun, so I don't get a lot of red tomatoes before the frost, but Matt's do better than any others I have tried for ripening indoors, and i consider them adequate for green salsa.

I saw that my success with sunflowers is not enjoyed by all, however. I use the plain black oil sunflowers that come in large bags that my flock eat. Perhaps in some gardens, they are just too robust and dominate the tomatoes  

Rick English wrote:...

I noticed something interesting, any tomatoes that were on trellises are still green:

A few observations:
1. Pokeweed seems to work fine as a living tomato support.
2. Sunflowers didn't work for me as tomato supports.
3. The tomatoes rambling along the ground ripen faster that those on trellises.
4. My sample was small, and mostly just a grab bag of heirloom tomato plants I started this winter, stuck in the ground, and then ignored until harvest.
5. The tomatoes rambling near the ground were on smallish raised beds with some wood buried in them - roughly 3 years old and lots of polyculture.

Very interesting.

I don't get a lot of red tomatoes and blamed it on what tomatoes I can grow successfully at all, and the length of my frost free days and sun hours. I have noticed however that I get red ones near the ground, and I don't mind that I lose some that way because they get planted. I leave mine to grow all over the place, but I only grow cherry tomatoes and they don't get watered, or started elsewhere.

You have gotten me wanting to experiment with bending and laying those sunflower staking plants on the ground soon before expected frost dates.

I had noticed the ones on the ground ripen first, but hadn't given it much thought. I have a farmer that used to get them to ripen using stockpiled brown bananas she would store in the freezer.

I have used sunflowers decently successfully. I plant a sunflower a little earlier than the tomatoes, and with a spacing that would allow 2 or 3 tomato plants between them. Then a few weeks later transplanted in the tomatoes. Then, when the tomatoes need support, I used the sunflowers as stakes to do the "florida weave" to hold the tomatoes up. Then throughout the season, keep the sunflower leaves trimmed off that shade or are in the way of the tomatoes.
This really only works if you plant in rows, but the rough (slightly pubescent) stalks of the sunflowers hold the string/twine up better than other things (bamboo for example). and they are stiffer and stay vertical better.
I never was convince using (and storing) temporary support for tomatoes. This is the best, and most useful, way to stake them, for me
Hope that is helpful. Give it a try!

The original topic was started back in 2015 so I don't know if this has already been mentioned.

It depends on what kind of tomatoes a person is growing as to whether they need to be staked.

Bush tomatoes may not need stakes and vine tomatoes most likely will need stakes.

I do like the title and the suggestion to use existing plants for the vines to grow up.

That picture that Rick English posted back on Aug 16, 2015 show exactly what the title suggested and those are some pretty tomatoes.

I stake my tomatoes for a number of reasons, but the main one is that when staked they take up less space and I  can plant more stuff.  Like squash.

I rember reading about pigeon peas as supports for tomatoes.
The idea was to provide nitrogen, a trellis and a crop.
These would only work in warm climates because they require a very long season to produce a crop.
I bought siberia pea shrub with the idea that it could serve in thus capacity.
My one plant has produced seeds, but not seedlings.
Just last night I noticed that someone had broken one of the branches, so I will probably try to start some cuttings.

Siberian pea has an uncertain edibility for humans,  so a different perennial nitrogen fixer might be preferable.