I finally built a tomato trellis that I’m happy with. I knew this was a good approach years ago, but it was one of those projects I never took the time to complete.
I usually grow about 30 tomato plants in three rows in one of my 20 feet long by five feet wide beds. Two years ago, when my crop was decimated by late blight, I learned that blight can be slowed by good air circulation. Crowded and damp conditions greatly increase the chance of blight, and I certainly was crowding my plants. I always had good fruit production, but until the blight hit, I didn’t realize I was setting myself up for problems because the plants were too close to breathe properly.
To increase the amount of air circulation around the plants, which I grow up through traditional conical tomato cages, I sloped the outer two rows of cages outward and planted the tomatoes farther apart in the rows across the bed. To keep the cages from falling over as the tomato plants gain weight, I lace all the cages together with jute twine and tie cages adjacent to the T-posts to the posts. This system will stand up to the strongest wind storms and no matter how heavy the plants get, they cannot pull over the cages.
In years past I set six T-posts per bed along the outside rows and just tried to tie the sprawling plants to the posts where possible. It was obvious that cross bracing at the top would solve a lot of problems in forcing the plants growth upward. This year, I used 8 posts per bed and laced branches across and around all the T-Posts at the top. I’m bundling about three stems of tomatoes together and lacing those to the cross-branches above and back to T-posts wherever I can. So far it’s working great. Just a caveat, while good air circulation can reduce blight problems, there is no guarantee that it will prevent blight.
I try to keep the area at ground level pruned of any tomato stems and fruit that may want to lie on the ground. I don’t mulch my plants for weed protection. I did that once and had a slug infestation. The plants seem to like having dry soil at ground level and keeping that area clean really improves air circulation. I can also verify that a bed full of tomatoes planted intensively really reduces the amount of weeding required.