TL;DR: How high should I build my tomato trellis?
I have a 4×8' raised bed. I grow 8 tomatoes evenly spaced (2×4 row), all indeterminants. Usually do 1-3 mainstem and prune most suckers until end of July when I inevitably fall behind and it becomes a jungle.
Currently I have a 5' cattle panel down the middle and posts from large tree limbs around it of varying heights. I run a lot of string to trellis that tomatoes and their branches. A lot of my plants exceed the max height 8-10+ft although, I've never measured. 12' seems to be a bit overkill though….
My plan is to clean this up and get rid of the tree limbs. I got a handful of 12' 2×4 (pressure treated, ground contact) from a neighbor and figured I could use these to build a trellis with a 2×4' at each corner. Connect the close corner vertical 2×4 together with a few horizontal 2×4 (like a wide ladder). Run a single 2×4 down to middle to join both ends. Then run paracord horizontally between eyehooks at the top and twine down vertically to the tomatoes as well as additional horizontal twine to make a weave to support tomatoes.
So maybe ill bury 2' of the 2×4 corners into ground and have the trellis 10' ???
So kind of like a close line over the raised bed with twine running down to each tomato plant. Thoughts?
bad hand drawn pic: https://imgur.com/a/DWIcAFW
by NippleSlipNSlide
2 Comments
Lol my tomatoes reached my roof gutter before I finally topped them. This is like asking when you should cut Repunzel’s hair.
I say 7 ft and just make sure you commit to topping in July.
My policy is to make your setup no more than about 12″ taller than you can comfortably reach (emphasis on “comfortably”!)…for me, that’d be about 8′ above ground level.
You can expect slicers to hang down after going a little bit over the top, and cherry types can be wrangled with a hoe (or whatever) as needed….but pruning/fastening/picking while on a ladder gets old *really* fast, unless you’re only growing a few plants.
Adding horizontal support works great, but omce they get more than about a foot taller than your horizontals (and they will, since new growth isn’t yet weighed down with fruit) it turns into a messy pain in the ass.