Sprawl Method

[TomatoDon]

I remember from some posts last year about planting tomatoes using the "sprawl" method. Best I can tell you plant the tomatoes and don't stake or prune, and they eventually sprawl on the ground. Obviously it works, but I am curious as to actual production. Can production be very good without staking them up in the conventional way, keeping the blossoms and fruit off the ground?

I thought I might try a little sprawling this year, but wanted to see from those who have tried it, as an estimate, what per cent of production you get as opposed to staking or caging.

If I try it I thought about laying out a strip of ground cloth so the plants would sprawl on that, hoping to keep them on something that would dry out quick after a rain and not have the fruit laying on the wet ground and grass. I'm hoping this whole notion is more productive that it seems initially.

Oh, and I am happy to report that the first tomato seedlings hit town today from Bonnie's Plant Farm and I happened to be driving by as the truck pulled in. I struck a deal before they ever got off the truck. Better Boys! Better Bush! Better than nothing! :wink:

Don

[elkwc36]

Don,
I'll give my experience and then others can chime in. I do both. My climate I'm sure is a lot different than yours. We have hot dry strong southwest winds. And if you cage you need to provide a wind break and a little shade if possible. Sprawling eliminates the need for as much wind break. My experience with the same varieities sprawlers produce 2.5 to 5 lbs. more. You will have a little more trouble with some going bad if you don't mulch heavy or use something to keep them off the ground. Also here we don't usually have a lot of rain and I water with drippers. I like sprawlers the best but continue to do both. Good luck however you decide to go. Jay

[TomatoDon]

That is very encouraging! I was expecting limited production, but you say you actually get more! That throws a new twist in my plans.

I have a nice little field that I didn't use last year, but it is good bottom land and is set up for irrigation. I can use lake water, well water, or community water which is already there and waiting. Do you hip up your rows? I could take a one row hipper and hip up a row, put the 3 ft wide ground cloth down, run a dripper line, use a fertilizer injection system to run the fertilizer through the line, mulch around the plant with wheat straw as you mention, and just see what it does. I could plant an unlimited amount of tomatoes that way, thousands if I wanted to. The hard part for me is always planting too many that I can't tend to properly once you get too many and are trying to stake and cage and prune them all. Takes a lot of time if you get over about 50 or so doing it that way. Sounds like sprawling eliminates most of that.

I'm interested to see if others have similar results as you. From what you said it sure sounds worth trying.

Thanks Jay! Any other tips?

Don

Oh, some of you will like this. I saw our local tomato guy at the Co-Op today. He grows them in his back yard, and has a little stand in front of his house, right here in town. He sets a table up, has several containers of tomatoes, a stack of sacks, scales, and a money box. If he's not home you just weigh up your own tomatoes and leave payment. If you need to make change, you use the money box. All on the honor system. Two years ago he sold enough to buy a small used car! I'm waiting for him to paint it tomato red! You gotta love living in Mayberry! Our zip code is still: E I E I O

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by don06

If I try it I thought about laying out a strip of ground cloth so the plants would sprawl on that, hoping to keep them on something that would dry out quick after a rain and not have the fruit laying on the wet ground and grass. I'm hoping this whole notion is more productive that it seems initially.

Carolyn is a proponent of sprawling, where space and sufficient mulch is available. She had success with it in New York.

But based on my experience of fungal problems in Houston, I would treat sprawling as an experiment in the tropical Gulf and humid South, not as a predictable way to grow tomatoes. You might get lucky and avoid fungal diseases in the plants and fruit rot, but I spend too much time and money in the garden to count on luck.

[TomatoDon]

Yes, Carolyn commented on it some, and that's basically where I got the idea. If I try it it will be just an addition to the others I have planned, but if it works it sure would be nice. But on the other hand...how many tomatoes do you need? :wink:

I'm hoping if you hip up the row, use ground cloth and mulch, that it may be a productive experiment. I see how the fungus and MS jungle rot could be a problem, but it may be worth the time just to see. Maybe if I microwave the fungicide and mix with tobacco juice it will negate any such potential maladies. Other than that, cross your fingers.

Don

[Fusion_power]

Don,

I've grown tomatoes sprawling here in NW Alabama. It is not an acceptable way to produce tomatoes! As noted, the humidity and the insects destroy 2/3 or more of the fruit. Putting them up with stakes or using cages is relatively easy.

Fusion

[carolyn137]

Carolyn is a proponent of sprawling, where space and sufficient mulch is available. She had success with it in New York.

****

Forget the mulch Morgan, for I never used it.

I've caged and staked tomatoes and also grown them by sprawling depending on where I was living at the time and the space I had available.

But most of the 2000 or so varieties that I've grown I've done so by sprawling.

Look, I had the space, I grew hundreds of plants each summer and at least two of each variety and so had the room and could never have grown what I did had I used some other method.

The rows were about 250 ft long, plants 3-4 ft within the row and rows were 5 ft apart. My farmer friend Charlie would have prepared my fiedl for me and then used his plant setter marker to set the rows or if he didn't have time I'd just use one of the makers made by the disc to set the rows.

Most of the time he or his men would do the cultivating and fertilizing when the plants were small, but there were those times that I had to take a bucket and spend hours hand fertilizing and I used my Mantis tiller as a kind of automatic hoe.

Of course there is some fruit loss for those fruits that touch the ground but until anyone condemns this method they should try it and when they do they'll quickly see that the fruits generally nestle up off the ground in the entwined vines.

Diseases? Sure, almost always the common fungal and bacterial foliage ones unless Daconil was sprayed for the fungal ones. No Fusarium where I live and only occasionally the randown plant with Verticillium.

Slugs? Not there but where I now live my raised bed is withn about 20 ft of Buttermilk Falls Brook on my property and sure I have slugs eating some of the fruits.

And now that I can grow so few plants, and only with help, yes it does bother me that the slugs get to some of them before fruits are harvested, but that's the way it is and I accept it.

Since I moved up here in 1999 I've had a chance to do some comparisons. That is, starting in 2000 I was groing tomatoes up here by sprawling at someone elses property as well as caging wuite a few at eomeone elses place, b/c they had an 8 ft deer fence. And at the same time I was growing 100's of plants by sprawling at Charlie's farm since our old farm had been sold.

So there were those times when the same variety in the same season was grown by both caging and sprawling and I never saw any huge difference in yield or anything else except I thought I saw more disease with the caged ones b'c the foliage, as always, is more densely packed.

So if one has room and is growing quite a few plants and lives in an area where they aren't going to have slug heaven, maybe, try it.

Critter damage? Sure, raccoons, skunks, mice, and mostly deer. But my goal is not to grow pristine plants and the ones where fruits were damaged were in the minority. And you haven't lived until you've seen what the deer can do to a tomato patch overnight.

[nctomatoman]

I think that growing unpruned on stakes or in cages, vs sprawling - yields should be essentially the same - it is all about what can get to your developing fruit if you let them sprawl, as is the common theme in this thread. In my garden in NC, if I let even a bit of foliage touch the ground, or dirt spashes up on the foliage, I have disease issues. We have every critter imaginable down here, so it simply is not an option for me....I need to go vertical. However, given appropriate fencing, and something to keep the soil off of the fruit and foliage, it is a reasonable low-maintenance way to go.

[greggf]

Dick Raymond, the garden writer, always approved of sprawl. I was always surprised, since he also discussed other ways of growing tomatoes, that letting plants sprawl was his preferred method. But, then, he gardens in VT.

=gregg=

[nctomatoman]

I actually used a plot when gardening in PA where I could let them sprawl as well, and for the most part, they did fine. Location, location, location!

[elkwc36]

You have to experiment and find what works in your area and soil. We have rather unique weather conditions here along with sandy soil. Several of us have done comparisons for many years and here if you don't have windbreaks and some shade on the south and west sprawlers will outperform caged plants. You get more set during the middle summer when we get the hot dry constant winds on the sprawlers. I feel this is where the difference is. I just try a few for experiments before I make any drastic changes in my growimg methods anymore. Took me almost 40 years to figure this out. Ha. I can't comment on humid areas. Jay

[keithaxis]

Here was my sprawling experience from last year. I had 40 plants in back yard that were all staked or caged. There was as point in June where I had a real nice Brandywine Suddath and Dr Carolyn that I felt I may as well plant out front.

So I had a lot of 2 way soil still in driveway, I piled that up in the corner of front yard, planted those two plants with one stake and let em just grow without any more staking...

Now, in September all the back yard is starting to ripen and the plants are looking a little more unhealthy with season getting later (these are the staked/caged ones) but wonderful production. Walk in front yard and those two plants that were let to sprawl are now just HUGE and incredibly green and lusch looking. As I look closer I find hardly any new fruit that is close to ripe, but the backyard ones are ripe...so the reason I think the sprawl plants were later in ripening was due to the plant lying on ground but then the little white hairs of course on stem get in contact with soil and grow new roots. I think all that sprawling kept the plant in kind of a vegetive state where it kept growing beautiful green leaves and such becasue of the constantly new root system that kept branching into soil. By October the Dr Carolyn had so so so many more fruit than the caged one in back yard but they never did get completely ripe as the season got too cold before they finished.

so to condense my above babble:

I let em sprawl, That added new roots all season and kept the plants as healthy as I have ever seen but also reallly delayed any fruit set. The Dr Carolyn that was not caged/staked must have been a 12 foot sprawl in all directions, just amazing looking...all the fruit on that plant was completely buried within the jungle of the plant..pretty cool but for me it delays the ripening too much...

also, the new soil that those were put in was also used on ever plant in the back yard, as I had 15 yards delivered last year...so the front and back yards had some medium..

Keith

waiting for march to start some seed...

[bryanccfshr]

I am intrigued by this method. Next year I think I am going to try a bed with sprawling.
I have low rise 6" raised beds surrounded by thick pea gravel. I just installed a drip irrigation system with elctronic timers etc.
Like Worth I have to step away from the plats for two weeks at a time and hope for the best. Staking is impossible to keep up with and although I would love to have 30 or so texas toimatoe cages I may have to start out with much less and build a collection. and I simply do not have space to store that many CRW cages.

If the sprawl area is a success I will be happy.

The bed I plan to use is 4x14 with nearly 3' on either side between other beds. I was thinking 4 plants of different varieties to give a fair shake.
AGG, CP, BW and BB.
Is that too many.. Maybe I will eliminate one? The bed in question is the one in the middle.

[TomatoDon]

As I've learned, through here at T'ville and by common sense, the sprawling method is just a nice way of articulating that the grower just lets them go and lets the plants do what they do the best they can without much guidance. I'm guessing the proponents of sprawling have so many that it would be impractical to tend to all of them, outside of a commercial operation. That is not a critism, just that I don't think a tomato plant can do as good sprawling on the ground, in most instances, than it can by being kept upright and being nurtured. They just need it. Probably 99% of the people here cage or stake them. The sprawling method is very rarely used when trying to get the very most out of a plant by the backyard gardener.

I am not a tomato scientist and don't care about growing as many different kinds as I can for the sake of the art. But I have a high respect for those that do. We wouldn't have what we have without them. Dr. C tops the list. Remember....Carolyn is way above us. She does things in a bigger and more intellectual way than we do. I doubt there has been a tomato person that ever lived that knows more about it, on the deep levels, than she does. I'm just am amateur and love to learn...and to eat good home grown tomatoes. Here at T'ville you will see all of it. Some of it will apply to you, and some will not. There are all kinds of ways of doing it. Try several and pick the one that suits your fancy. I doubt many people have made as many mistakes as I have, but I'm finally stumbling onto the things that I like. Dr. C helped that greatly. She really knows what she is talking about, and I'm guessing she used the sprawl method, with all the MANY varieties she tested, as her best way of getting the most out of each year and learning all this. But that is not backyard gardening.

Dr. C's sprawl method really doesn't work here in my climate, in the way I am going about it, but just think of ALL the MANY contributions she has made. My word....I couldn't take care of 1,000 plants a year! No one single person can. Not the right way.

I am convinced the sprawling method worked/works great for Dr. C in her genetic and variety experiments, but, with all due respect, I don't think it is a good method for the backyard gardener. It's just not the best way to nurture a tomato plant and get the most out of it. It is a whole different ballgame.

Don

[carolyn137]

I am convinced the sprawling method worked/works great for Dr. C in her genetic and variety experiments, but, with all due respect, I don't think it is a good method for the backyard gardener. It's just not the best way to nurture a tomato plant and get the most out of it. It is a whole different ballgame.


*****

Don, my focus on growing tomatoes was never genetic experiments or anything scientific. I just wanted to grow as many different varieties as I could b'c I was fascinated with heirloom tomatoes.

Did you know that I was raised on what we call a truck farm here in the East? My father raised lots of different vegetables and we still had the large peach and pear orchards that my grandparents had. So I've been up close and personal with tomatoes, for instance, since I was about 5 ( I was 68 in June)when I was sent out by my dad with a can of kerosene to knock Colorado Potato Beetles into it and I got a penny for each beetle. But dad was disappointed in me b'c back then I couldn't bring myself to crush the orange eggs on the undersides of the leaves.

My father and all other farmers that I knew growing up also grew their plants by sprawling so it was natural that I would as well.

Even when I lived at different places I tried to grow my plants by sprawling if I had the room.

The natural growth habit of tomatoes in the wild is by sprawling. And almost all the early growers of tomatoes in the US used the same method.

When immigrants from the Meditteranean basin came here and grew their tomatoes the same way grapes were gorwn back home, that started the trend towards trellising and staking.

it makes no difference to me how anyone grows their tomatoes but I do tend to sometimes see a bias against sprawling them.

All I ask, before the method is condemned, is that a person takes plants of the same variety and cages one, stakes one and allows one to sprawl and then compares them.

Of course there are those areas where critters won't allow for sprawling, that I know.

And one doesn't need to grow 1000 plants to sprawl them. Heck, ever since I fell and can no longer grow what I used to grow I have just a few around the house. I usually have someone put 6 at one end of the raised bed, sprawled, and the other 8 are grown in containers.

And please do refer to me as Carolyn for I'm retired and the Ph.D bit retired with me. Thanks.