Grow the Best Tomatoes! Maintenance & Care Tips 

Good morning Jennifer!

I just ordered some neat little clips meant for trailing vegetables, I'm excited to try them this year!

Your tomatoes are looking great Great tips on how to take care of them I have been growing mine on cattle panel trellises in previous years but I am trying the lower and lean method this year

100% agree on no spray as much as possible. My husband will occasionally use neem but I don't even like that.

I've tried all of the support methods for tomatoes over the years I think. I now use the string trellis/lower and lean method for indeterminates, and square tomato cages for the cherries, determinates, semi-determinates, and dwarf indeterminates. The cages take a lot less maintenance but I guess that's mainly because I don't prune those plants much. This is my first year with dwarf indeterminates, so we will see how that works out. I prune my indeterminates to a double- or triple-stem, so I run each stem up a separate string or sometimes they can share a string. I get better yield this way than with single-stem. I find that with a relatively short season, I don't want to prune off all of that potential fruit especially early in the year. As the season winds down, I start to terminate some of the stems so I don't wind up with a lot of immature tomatoes when the frost hits. I don't usually have much pest pressure on tomatoes. Blight and spotted leaf disease are my main issues to control here.

That first tie on a tomato plant you showed is not good, because the branch will prevent it from growing up. My tip is to use a strait stick with a zip tie.