A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum The Tomato Forum Letting tomatoes vine on the ground?

Hi! My name is Penny. I've been a member of the forum for awhile but have never posted anything. There is a question that I would like to ask. My sister and I would like to let our tomatoes just to vine on the ground and not stake them at all. Tomatoes are naturally a vine and so we think it would be okay. I guess my question is how we would go about doing this? Any help and suggestions would be great. The tomatoes we have right now is and heirloom tomato and a Beefsteak tomato. We are also planning to get a couple of cherry tomatoes also. Once again thank you for any help you can give.

I hope everyone is having a good evening.


Penny

My grandparents never staked tomatoes, they said they got more tomatoes just leaving them vine on the ground. The one drawback is that it's impossible to weed under them without damaging the plants it seems and the bugs have a better chance of getting at the fruit.

Is there a reason why you don't want to stake them? Just curious

How would you get water to the plants roots?

Water on foliage leads to a greater level of disease, both bacterial and fungal. When the foliage is wet, stay out of the tomatoes since that is a perfect time to spread disease. Another drawback with watering plants on the ground would be the mud it would create which can make getting back into the garden a messy experience. I would think weeds would be everywhere.

If you do not want to stake them habe you considered using tomato cages ?

I either use them or the 2 sided cages my husband has made me out of cattle panels. I agree with Best-0-Four. Watering might be a challenge

If you are decided to do this though may I suggest putting a heavy layer of grass cuttings (none with grass seed) on the soil around the plants before they get to large, or to do the same with straw. This would help keep the plant directly off of the ground.

Hi, Thanks for the quick replies. To be honest with you we don't want to mess with cages or stakes.And we do have the room. I know it sounds silly but really good cages are expensive. We would rather put that towards more plants. The way we look at if it doesn't work it doesn't work and next year we use cages...LOL
And when we do water we will just be careful about the leaves. My grandparents also just let the tomatoes vine on the ground. I can remember helping my grandfather putting coffee cans under the branches to hold them off the ground. Thanks for the great input. :) Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Penny

let us know how it turns out. Maybe we'll all be doing it next year.

How about using weed blockers or tarps? If you haven't planted your tomatoes yet, you can lay the tarp or fabric/plastic weed blockers where the tomatoes will be planted. Cut holes big enough to plant the tomato seedlings.


the vines can freely spread over the tarp or the weed blocker;

helps keep the tomato vines/leaves/fruits/shoes when gardening clean;

the tarp or weed blocker will keep out or minimize weeds;

helps keep the soil damp/moist; less watering;

reflected heat will help keep the tomato plants warm.

I've tried both leting tomatoes "sprawl" without staking, and several types of staking/tying tomatoes. I really suggest some type of staking. Google "Florida Weave" for a fairly simple way to train the vines. All of the drawbacks mentioned above cause a lot of loss of fruit. A thick layer of straw can help when "sprawling" tomatoes, but slugs and other pests and diseases sometime take a toll. Never let them sprawl right on soil, that's asking for real trouble. Storebought cages are of little benefit as the vines simply crush them and wind up on the ground amyway except with smaller varieties of vines. Florida weave involves several t-posts or other posts and cords run the length of the row, and a better, in my opinion, method is fence fabric run from post to post with 4 foot or less spacing of posts.
my experience is that you will get 2 to 3 times more undamaged fruit with some type of staking or trellising. A thick layer of straw mulch, ideally, could give similar results, but if pests are numerous, losses will be heavy

Hi folks,
Once again thanks for all of the suggestions and advice about my question. My sister and I talked it over and we decided to only "experiment" with on plant and stake the rest. We're going to let the Sweet 100 Cherry tomatoes vine on the ground.

There is also another question I would like to ask. This morning I noticed flowers on a couple of my plants. Should i go ahead and pinch them off or leave them. It's going to be at least a month before we can get them outside and in the ground.
In fact we are expecting snow later in the week...LOL That's life in Montana.

I hope everyone is having a good day.

Penny

Keep us posted.

I don't know the answer to your ?.

I pinch mine off til they make it to the ground...your weather is like mine..unpredictable.

I see no harm in pinching off the blooms if they won't be going outside for a while? more energy going for a stronger plant, instead of for making flowers.
and, I'll say this again, kuddos to those of you up north that go to all the trouble to grow tomatoes indoors. almost makes me feel guilty about how easy they are to grow down here.

It's not really trouble, just a necessity to get ripened tomatoes. Yet the province under me can grow and ripen them on the vine....zones vary severely here.

My thought is that what you'll trade off in time staking or otherwise supporting them you will spend in time tending them. I think mostly what's at issue-- from a pest point of view-- is air circulation. The greater the better.

As above, if you do let them sprawl, then definitely use a heavy straw mulch (which should help with watering issues b/c your soil will stay pretty moist with just weekly concentrated waterings).

I also agree that those stupid tomato cages are not worth diddly.

If you have small space, you might consider putting in a few fairly heavy posts, at least 6' tall, sunk 12" or so deep (depending on your winds) at the beginning and end of your rows. About 12" from both the top and bottom, and in the middle between, drill holes and string a wire between the posts. Then "weave" some fairly heavy string through the wires. Does this make sense? The wire is parallel to the ground, the string more or less perpendicular. Space your plants and as they grow, use cable tie outs to loosely tether them to the messwork you've created.

Whether to go for one main shoot in this scheme or to let them side branch is a question.

Dave?

Oh, hi, just caught your query, Marica.
Some people choose to pinch sidebranches, but of all the most devoted tomato growers I've known, only a very few pich anything except for leaves that are in contact with the ground or nearly so, and then later, only pinch a little when the plants get totally unruly. I've never pinched. Along with good air circulation, the tomato fruits need shading from direct, hot sun, and so more foliage is better in that sense. Ripening tomatoes are prone to severe sunscald...that can ruin a fruit as bad asf any insect or disease...I've had plants topple a stake and fall over, and the newly exposed fruit literally cooked. Totally ruined.
I haven't yet found the perfect method of caging or staking...the preferred method seems to be to build our own cages out of concrete reinforcing wire, CRW.
It's somewhat dangerous to work with because the thick wire is somewhat springy and can pop and slice you while cutting it, unless you really feel confident about your ability to handle it, I would not recommend doing this. I haven't really had the money to buy a roll of CRW, it's pricey, but not so bad per cage.
This year I'll be driving T-posts, 2 at each end of a row, and then bracing these whith either an extra post on each at a diagonal angle, or by securing a wire as a cable brace to a stake in the ground, then running parallel wires from post to post along the row, and tying to these with clothesline cord.
I may use cattle panels instead of wire so that there's no limit to where I can make ties. In that case, I could get by with a single panel instead of parallel
panels.

I too am somewhat perplexed with the desire to grow on the ground. I've had some neglected tomato vines grow on the ground and the tomatoes were always inferior. Dogs urinating on the tomatoes. Groundhogs, Chipmunks, rabbits and squirrels helping themselves to an easy snack, just taking a few bites and leaving a gaping wound in the tomato to invite disease and insects. Slugs and other bugs seem to be much more of a nuisance if the tomatoes are on the ground. The tomatoes that are actually touching the ground that actually survive disease and insects and other threats have that semi-flat bottom and odd deformed shapes that may be somewhat interesting but not what I consider appetizing. The tomatoes, leaves and vines get much more exposure to the dirt which I don't think is as appealing and I think it gives much more opportunity for disease. When it rains or you spray with water, some of the dirt ends up splashing back up a few inches high. Also if it's near an area that you mow and you're using a discharge type of mower the yard waste often ends up on the plant and sometimes projectiles from the mower can damage the plants and tomatoes. Me and my family have even accidentally ran over some of the vines with the mower. From my experience growing them on a fence or on a trellis tends to reduce the collateral damage.

I prefer trellis netting or a chain-link or wire field fence. I really like the trellis netting that is much like bird netting but has the extra large holes about 4 inches weave so you can get your hand through and pick a fairly large tomato. I've used the smaller bird netting for a trellis and that works pretty well for cherry tomatoes but some of the tomatoes get caught between the weave, particularly if you're growing something larger than cherry tomatoes.

If you're a real cheapskate like me just buy a few stakes (or find a friend that has some bamboo or cane that they can spare) and some string and make your own hodgepodge of a trellis.

Hi everyone, We finally got our tomatoes in the ground last weekend.It has been so rainy and wet here we didn't know when we would could plant.Luckily we did have a few dry days here and there.Our tomatoes are okay but they could look better.We did have a couple of pretty cool nights.We've decided to stake all the plants. We also got our beets and radish seeds in the ground and zucchini and cucumber plants will be next. All we can do is hope for the best.

Hope everyone is having a good week.

Penny

Penny, It was the same here, I just planted a little over a week ago and the rest this week.

We had weeks of rain and are now in a DRY spell.

I am in central Florida and we are letting our plants go all natural this year and vine on the ground, penny, how did your experiment work out?