Thinking About Trellises for Tomatoes

As you can see by the above photo of my Cherokee Purple Tomato plants, it is time for me to start thinking seriously about what I am going to be doing in regards to how I will be supporting them.


I've reviewed many systems designed to support tomatoes, including the way my parents did it. They put locust fence posts in the ground and ran twine or wire along the top and another length of twine along the bottom, about a foot off the ground. They ran twine vertically between the top and bottom runs of twine for each tomato plant, and trained the tomato plants to grow up the vertical twine.


One method I'm flirting with for these tomato plants is a trellis system as described in this video...










...modified to use available materials. I'm thinking of tying off the plants using an elastic material. Kenny Point has Tomato Trellis System Designed by Kenny Point that I'm going to think about using in my garden.


The other method that I am strongly considering is the one described by Mel Bartholomew in his Square foot Gardening book. You can see a decent photo of that system in use at Adventures in Remuddling. A very handy tutorial on constructing one is below...




It seems that you can find tutorials on pretty much anything on You Tube these days. 


I am leaning very strongly toward using the system described by Mel in his Square Foot Gardening method, but cost considerations may force me to use the trellis described by Kenny Point. I'll be sure to let you know what I go with, and will (of course) post videos and photos of that...


I'll leave you with a look at some Dark red kidney Beans that started breaking through the soil last night...



...already visions of soups and chili's are dancing through my head as I watch these things grow.