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Post by brownrexx on Feb 10, 2015 9:23:13 GMT -5
I know that you don't do this James but farmers here ,let 'em sprawl too and they also spray them for insects as well as fungal treatments for blight.
Supporting the plants up off of the ground here in the northeast keeps them elevated from those soil borne diseases and spores.
I use home made tomato cages for all of mine.
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Post by davidjp on Feb 10, 2015 11:55:56 GMT -5
I can see the advantages of just letting them sprawl if you have the space. By the end of the season some of mine will sprawl a bit as well especially this past year as I was away for over a month in mid summer. I do tend to get more damage from insects that way although really not too bad. But it really gets to be a mess and not efficient in my space. I actually have lots of space (acre and a half) but my problem is I have to supply all the water so stuff has to be limited to a fairly small area. Combine that with the fact that I like to try a bunch of different varieties means that I need to be as space efficient as possible.
Even the standard concrete reinforcing wires cages really take up too much room for me. I'm usually growing about 20 different varieties so I like to have something that's really space efficient. And I still do the English thing of growing some on 18 inch-2ft spacing and keeping to a single leader up a pole, habits die hard, but it does allow me to get a ton of varieties in a small space.
I like this way as your maximising sun exposure for that space used and its been pretty efficient for me. Its also a good method of providing shade as sunscald can be a problem here. One of the great things is that the tomatoes tend to hang down on the reverse side so its easy to walk by with a basket and pick up your crop, none of this firking about and bending down to harvest most are at chest height already.
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Post by breezygardener on Feb 10, 2015 12:22:38 GMT -5
Back when we lived in our log house on the VA/WV mountaintop borderline & I was putting in our first garden, I predictably raised more tomato seedlings than I had cages for, so ended up caging some, staking some, & letting some just sprawl. The sprawlers were surrounded by a thick bed of straw to keep them a bit off the ground. The caged tomatoes produced the most, the staked tomatoes produced the least, & the sprawlers were somewhere inbetween depending on how diligent I was on picking them, since obviously being on the ground made them highly susceptible to insect, rodent, & disease.
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