I have tried many different systems to hold my tomato plants off the ground. (One year I actually just left them to sprawl on the straw mulch. Resulted in a lot of rotten tomatoes!) I have carefully tied each plant to a six-foot tall stake with shreds of old t-shirts and concientiously removed all the suckers. I have made my own tomato cages out of fencing mesh. I have built elaborate trellis systems. But this is my current favorite. I copied it from a friend’s garden down the road. It uses fewer supports than staking each plant and the plants need very little tying up since they mostly flop over the middle support. (I tie the errant tomato branch up to keep things tidy and make picking easier.) This bed is five feet by ten feet and is home to eighteen tomato plants in three rows of six. I should get a lot of tomatoes to freeze from this one bed if the bugs and the weather cooperate! (How about that happy corn behind the tomato bed!)
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