VI
TO TRAIN THEM UP OR LET
THEM SPREAD
Growers attending conventions will often stay up half the night to argue about training and pruning tomatoes and to debate the details of their favorite procedures.
For home garden, the method is strongly commended. Many market gardeners follow the practice and it has gained materially of recent years in New England. Some market reports quote staked tomatoes separately and at a materially higher level than fruit from unpruned plants.
Most of the southern shipping sections follow the practice and it is practically universal in greenhouses.
One way is to drive a stake by each plant tying at several points along the stem with cheap twine. The other plan, recently gaining in favor, is to set posts every 25 feet or so, string a heavy wire on top, and another a foot from the ground. Cheap jute twine is strung between wires and the tomato plants are merely twisted around the string. Tying is not required. Some omit the lower wire, tying a non-slipping bowline loop around the plant near the ground. In either case, plants are kept trimmed to a single stem though occasionally an extra branch is allowed to grow. In southern Illinois, plants are tied to a short stake [without pruning].
Figure 15.—Tomatoes pruned and trained with post, wire and twine. This is the trellis system of [New England].