[zendog]

Are you planning just one row of tomatoes across the back and then other, smaller veggies in front, or do you want to just do tomatoes?

My beds are 3 feet by 9 and I grow 9 tomatoes in a single row, so just 12 inch spacing between plants with the first plant 6 inches in from the edge and row planted 6 inches off the back edge of the bed. To make this work I keep them as single stem. The beds run east to west and this leaves me a couple feet in front of the tomatoes to put peppers, greens, etc. This allows me to get a lot of varieties in and gives me a lot of plants so that if I loose one or 2 to disease, I'm not taking as big a loss as I would with fewer plants. Also, I really like the airflow between the tomatoes and the fact that as I take leaves off the bottom I'm getting further from the soil and possible splashing, disease, etc. If I loose a plant, I just let a sucker from the neighboring plant grow and train it over to the string from the dead plant making a double stem plant.

If I was doing 2 rows in each bed, I'd probably put the second row close to the front of the beds , so I could grow 18 tomatoes in a 3X9 bed. The aggressive pruning probably doesn't give me the highest possible production, but I much prefer to have more plants and more varieties.