After last years jungle of tomato plants in our kitchen garden. I am planning on trying something a bit different this year. This is year three of trying to find a good support system for our sungold toms. Last year I used tomato rings tidied together. But with plants nearly 5ft in height they just bent over and gave in. Had a lot more success in the main garden with top down support i.e. tieing string to the bottom of the plant up to a top beam and winding the tom around it. Should work even better this year as I have read for the bigger toms i am growing I should top them at 4 shoots. Any back to the Espalier, I want to keep the veg garden tidier whilst letting more sun and air into the sungolds. The plan is to make a box frame around the toms trim the main stem at 4ft and let side stems come out at 2 and 4ft. At which point i plan to train them along the horizontal bars. I'm hoping this lets air go through a lot better than last year whilst providing better support. With them being sungolds (cherry's) they should hang down from both the main stem and horizontals like grapes, allowing better sun ripening and a better crop. Just wondering if anyone else has tried this method? I'll post some pics once the rain stops and i can get outside to start building.
After a some more research it seems that some authority sites say its possible. So will post pictures through the season
so thought i would post on this. at the end of the year. i used sungold tomatos in the experiment, which are fast growers and prolific producers, so controlling the off shoots became very difficult. However for a slower growing vine type it could work very well. that said for the sungolds it still worked amazingly well at containing the toms and keeping the plants upright and off the ground, and providing the support structure for the toms to create offshoots and hence lots of toms. heres a couple of pics. espelier tomato experiment 1 ( photo / image / picture from Danjensen's Garden ) i made the frame inline with the garden, with cross braces at 1.5ft intervals. I then trained the first side shoots along these. Forcing them to go horizontal. these horizontal branches under stress then put out a large number of vertical side shoots. all that produced toms. espelier tomato experiment 2 ( photo / image / picture from Danjensen's Garden ) better side shot. I pruned all leaves and stems upto the first 1.5ft level to allow good airflow ease of watering/feeding and a growing space for my basil. it also helps with picking. overall i have 8 plants growing in the space and had enough toms for meals everyday and roasting down for sauce in the freezer. if your looking for a good way to control your cherry toms i highly suggest this method,
Well Dan, it looks like you had a successful experiment there, with healthy plants and plenty of toms. It was good seeing your foto's and reading about how you did it. I sure wish that toms would grow outside for me here. Well, they grow, but the Phytophthora gets them every time if I do. Anyway, congrats on a successful experiment and a great harvest!
I might need to try something like this next year. I had a large number of cherry tomato plant volunteers that I moved to their own row in the garden. They were left to 'free range' in the garden. They grew very, VERY well however once they were loaded with fruit they flopped over and the fruit was nearly impossible to pick.
thats the problem i had last year with the same number of plants Netty, with this kind of cage the vines use it as a support and then cross branches to support each other. i've also no doubt that they will be self seeding from wind fall next year.
