Adding in a Weave

It's prom season here in Zone 6b, and you've never seen so much glitz, frilly prom dresses and hair weave going on. And so, in the spirit of the (prom) season, I've decided to add my very own weave.

The Classic Florida Weave

Every year I struggle with my tomatoes. The first year I bought the four foot galvanized round cages and ended up tying twine from them, up into the trees and twisting the tomato vines around them.

Because my tomatoes grew over 7 feet tall...

And last year, I bought the thin but heavy duty metal tomato towers, which fell over in heavy rain and uprooted a few tomato plants on their way down.

So I bought a few of these....

8 foot tall garden stakes, which you can get for a couple of dollars a piece at any home supply or garden store.

I shoved them in the ground, on at each end of the row...

And I put on in the middle, or you can put one after each plant...

And you grab yourself a bit of twine...

Tie the twine to one stake at the end of the row...

And begin to weave it on one side of the first tomato plant and on the other side of the next, then around the center stake and then back and forth until you reach the other end. Then wrap it a couple of times around the end stake and go back again, winding it around the opposite side of each plant on the way back.

Repeat this process as your tomatoes grow and it should create a nice wall of tomatoes.

Some people say you should pluck off those lower tomato leaves from the plants, but I never have. I heard one gardener say that the lower leaves block the sun out for the weeds. Sounds good to me...

What do you think? How do you manage your tomatoes?

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