Too many varieties- making space

[b54red]

I have had a very successful seeding this year and as a result of the good germination I now have way more varieties than I can fit into my beds. I am considering limiting my plants to just one stem so that I can crowd more plants into some of my beds. I have never done this but if it works I could grow out all of the varieties though I know I wouldn't get as many tomatoes from the individual plants. The reason for limiting to one stem is the need to keep good air flow in our very hot humid climate while only giving the plants about 2 feet when I ordinarily give each around 5 to 6 feet and limit to no more than 5 stems and they still get crowded. I support with a 7 foot tall trellis with 3 horizontal bars so the plants can get really tall. Some of my tried and true favorite varieties I have already set out giving them about 4 ft of space but if I do this for the remainder of my beds I will be left with around 30 varieties without a place to grow.

Has anyone else out there ever limited their tomatoes to one stem and what were the benefits and problems with doing this?
If there are major problems I guess I'll just have to give away even more than usual. I'm not looking for gigantic production but rather great variety.

I would really like to get all these varieties in the ground and find out if they are suited for my area and if they are good eating. I know I should have planned better but I never dreamed that so many varieties I got in trade would germinate this well.

[ContainerTed]

Five gallon buckets are about $2.50 at Lowes (grey colored house logo brand). Put your determinates and small/compact plants into buckets and the larger plants into the garden. Use MG or ??? potting mix for the buckets. You'll need to water the buckets more, but you'll get everything growing without so much overcrowding and all that pruning.

Just a suggestion.

Ted

[kath]

I say go for the variety this year.

Last year was my first time trying to grow as many heirlooms as I could fit in my garden. Threads by dcarch and others gave me confidence that close planting wouldn't hurt if I pruned accordingly.

I planted no more than 2 plants of any variety, but most often just one. Some were planted as much as 4' apart and allowed up to 5 vines (caged); at 3' apart, I tried to keep it to 3 vines; 2' apart got 2 vines; in the last row to fit them all in they each got 14" and were kept to 1 or 2 vines. All plants produced nice tomatoes and plenty for me to decide if we liked them. By "we" I mean DH & I plus 7 neighbor families. We had fruit from July to Oct. in the garden and until Dec. from the ones we brought in before frost.

This year my setup will be different than anything I did last year but aside from the few that will receive a cage and more real estate, they will ALL be kept to 1 vine from the beginning. If the weather, disease, bugs, etc. cooperate I have no worries about not having enough tomatoes or not getting to try all of the new ones varieties.

Since I felt that sunscald might be an issue with single stem pruning, I plan to put 2 plants at a 12" distance with a sturdy stake in between them, leaving 3' between stakes.

I won't always grow them this closely, but it works for me for now. Early Blight, Septoria and bugs were significantly more troublesome for the plants that grew in a cage w/ 5 vines. Not sure I'd ever try growing in cages without any pruning.

I think this is less work that setting up buckets but whatever you decide, I sure hope you get to plant and taste all your varieties this year.

[maf]

Over here in England limiting the tomato plant to one stem is the traditional way to grow indeterminate varieties. I usually grow this way myself and the major benefits are fitting more plants into a smaller space and increased air flow around the plants for less fungal problems etc.

The only major problem is keeping on top of pinching out the side branches before they get too large, but this soon becomes part of the regular routine of inspecting and tending the plants. (I find the best time to pinch out the side shoots is when they are between one and two inches long - they are large enough to remove cleanly but not so large as to need a cutting tool.) In your hotter climate sunscorch could be a potential problem, but I would think having the plants closer together would help to shade the neighbouring plants.

The commercial greenhouse guys (in various parts of the world) also use this method of training their tomato plants - you can be sure they would not do so if it wasn't proven to give the biggest yield per square foot. They string a rope or twine from the base of the plant up to the ceiling of the greenhouse and as the plant grows they twist the rope around the plant for support and when the plant reaches the roof they simply lower the rope, and the vine with it, so the plant can carry on growing upwards. I don't know if you could adapt the trellis system in a similar way?

If you can be bothered to keep on top of the necessary pruning (more pinching out than true pruning) then it will be well worth the effort for the reward of growing more varieties. Good luck!

[dice]

One thing a greenhouse provides is less than 100% light
transmission. This probably reduces the risk of sunscald.

Growing outside in the direct sun in a hot climate, you may
want to use Missouri pruning instead on plants where you
only leave 3 stems or less. The difference from greenhouse
style pruning is that you only pinch off the tip of the side-shoot,
leaving a couple of sets of leaves on it for more shade for the
fruit.

This also provides more leaf surface area for photosynthesis
(might affect flavor and production).

[b54red]

I am going to try it this year and see what happens. Thanks for all the suggestions.

I will have some in buckets but they usually disappoint in size and taste compared to the ones grown in the garden but there is the advantage of avoiding some of my fusarium problems. I think I will grow all of my cherries in buckets since I can never find a use for all of them and the reduced production will help with the picking. Maybe Sungold will only produce a few hundred in a bucket instead of the thousand or so in the garden.

I don't think I can go as close as a foot apart because of disease and air flow problems but maybe a little less than 2 feet might work out in the space I have and sitll allow adequate air flow. I really don't know what to do with the determinates, but I think if I prune them that severely there might be very little or no fruit from them. I have pruned determinates to increase air flow but never to just a few stems.

I do worry about sunscald so will try to use the Missouri method once they get above 2 feet tall. I remove all leaves below 18 inches anyway because of the disease problems that always show up on the lower limbs down here.

I don't know what will happen once the plants get over the top of the trellis but maybe I can bring some back down and run others along the top rail. I'm sure there will be many I won't have to worry about because fusarium and TSWV usually take care of a good portion of my plantings before they ever get that tall.

I think this will be a fun experiment. Since I like to stagger my plantings and keep replacing the ones that die with new plants this might provide some of the ones that don't produce in the first planting a chance later on. I am still building trellises and getting some of the beds ready but seem to be running out of time since we are having a really early spring this year. I'll try to get some photos and keep up with them so that I can post the results a little later.

Thanks, Bill

[Full Moon]

I plan to put 2 plants at a 12" distance with a sturdy stake in between them, leaving 3' between stakes

Kath, I'm trying to get my head around your plan.

The way I read it is you are going to end up with a spacing of 2' between each "sets" of two plants if the stake are at 3' apart (Correct?)

This is how I visualize what I'm reading:
@ o"(plant) - @ 6"(stake) - @ 12" (plant) (24" space) @ 36"(plant) -@ 42"(stake)- @ 48"(plant) etc......

Are you going to run two one stem plants to one stake?

I must be missing something

[ireilly]

I think she means

Stake - 1 foot - plant - 1 foot - plant - 1 foot - stake

etc.

probably should have said "each plant at a 12 inch distance from a sturdy stake".

Either method kind of implies an unequal plant-to-plant distance imo.

Or maybe I'm the one who's wrong, or there's another solution.

[Marko]

b54red, like maf said pruning to one stem is traditional way to grow tomatoes in Europe. Professional growers plant at 40cm/16 inch in greenhouses. I had the best results with 2 feet distance and two stems per plant - even if you want just one stem you'll end with two .

[kath]

Sorry for the confusion - hope this helps:


o----X-----o------------------------o-----X-----o-----------------------o-----X-----o


The o's are the plants and they will be about 6" from a stake or close enough to tie to it.

So yes, Full Moon, there will be 2 vines tied to each stake and 2' between pairs of plants. Each (-) above represents an inch.

Dice, thanks for the reminder about Missouri pruning.

Ireilly, yes it is an unequal plant to plant ratio.

B54red, the determinates will be extremely unhappy and unproductive if pruned, I think.

Marko, I hear you about the two stems happening even if you don't want them to - had it happen with several last year.

Best of luck to everyone this year no matter what you're growing or how you're planning to care for them!

[b54red]

Kath I started pruning determinates about 3 years ago and my production increased. I think it is just because I pruned to open the center of the plant up to allow better air flow and as a result they weren't devastated by disease as they usually were. I had given up on determinates down here because I would get a few tomatoes then the plant would start dying from the center where the foliage was thickest. The high humidity stops that dense foliage from drying out each morning and the diseases just latch on no matter how often I apply Daconil. I now grow a few determinates each year with success because of the moderate pruning.

[kath]

Thanks for the info, b54red - I'm going to be growing a few determinates this year and will try what you describe because I've seen the "disease in the center" problem with them here repeatedly.

[Full Moon]

I'll be interested to hear about how this spacing/staking/pruning went for you Kath.

I'm still not sure on my layout on how much time and money I want to spend turning my virgin backyard into a decent veggie patch.

I will most likely stay away from cages I have used them in the past and am not a big fan of them. Pruning is definatly part of the plan for me though. Maybe to 2-3 stems.

The snow is melting fast here. The last week has been very mild. I can see grass!!!! Isn't this the best time of the year

[casino]

When I need to grow more tomatoes than I have space for I use this method. I buy a roll of garden fence wire, 5 feet tall X 50 feet long. Stretch this out and use heave duty stakes to support the fence. Buy some electrical conduit pipe and zip tie it along the top of the fence line and this pipe keeps the fence as straight as an arrow and nice and tight. Plant the tomatoes 1-2 feet apart, trim to one or 2 stems and use an old bed sheet cut in strips and tie the plant onto the fence as it grows up. When I find my keepers I save the seeds and grow them in the big garden next year with lots of space to fully develop.

Sometimes I can get up to 40 tomatoe plants growing along this fence line for "taste" evaluation. For fall clean up there is very little material to be put away into storage and everything is re-usable again next year. In the long haul it becomes cost effective.

[kath]

Originally Posted by Full Moon

I'll be interested to hear about how this spacing/staking/pruning went for you Kath.

I'm still not sure on my layout on how much time and money I want to spend turning my virgin backyard into a decent veggie patch.

I will most likely stay away from cages I have used them in the past and am not a big fan of them. Pruning is definatly part of the plan for me though. Maybe to 2-3 stems.

The snow is melting fast here. The last week has been very mild. I can see grass!!!! Isn't this the best time of the year

I'll be sure to post about how it goes.

Saving $ is part of the reason why I'm just using stakes for the most part this year. I don't plan on growing this many plants forever or using this much of the garden space for tomatoes so I'm trying to hold off on spending too much on a support system for so many varieties. We get the stakes for free and even the wire for the cages we have was free except for the $60 I paid for a barely used roll of CRW through craigslist.

We do keep spending $ on garden expansion, but there doesn't seem to be a downside to that, aside from additional upkeep; in these times we are trying to produce more and more of our own food. Also I LOVE watermelon, and really don't have enough room to grow them well as it is.

Last year I had several plants that had their own stakes and I pruned to 2 vines. They did really well and there was no problem with sunscald.

When that snow disappears and you can feel the sun growing stronger, it is exciting indeed! I got a bit of a burn the other day when it was 72 here.

Enjoy!