- There are almost as many ways
to trellis and tie up tomatoes
as there are tomato varieties themselves.
So in today's video, we're gonna demystify it,
build a simple trellis
and show you the cheapest way to tie them up.
So cultivate that Like button,
and I will personally come to your house
and dig your posts for you,
and let's get into the video.
For tomato trellises, you can go as simple
or as complex as you want.
Last year, we did a Florida weave,
it's T-posts in the ground
and conduit running across the top,
super cheap and easy.
This year, we're getting a little bit more intense
with some four by fours and some two by fours
and digging down deep into the soil,
and for that, I need the garden boys.
And here they are.
- Let's do it? - Ready?
Back again. (Jacques laughs)
We've got Jacques, the garden hermit,
(both laughing)
and Paul, who has been helping out
for a while here at the homestead.
Let's get these in the ground.
The basic plan, Jacques,
four by fours in the ground coming up,
two by fours coming across,
we'll use some eye hooks at the top and we'll drop a line,
and we'll show you how to tie it up in just a second here.
Let's get to digging. - Let's do it.
- [Kevin] It might seem crazy
that we're not using concrete to set these posts,
but if you dig down about two or three feet
and then jam the earth in around the four by four post,
it'll stay in there pretty damn well.
Okay, we're in with one. - It's looking good.
Luckily, it'll be so tall that it won't be a hazard.
- Yeah, yeah, no, that won't be a problem.
- So can you reach to that height?
- I can reach there,
yeah, I can reach there. - I can't, so,
this is a Kevin height. - Yeah.
This build might look intimidating,
but it's actually really easy and cheap to build.
The only real costs are how much a two by four
or four by four costs in your area at the time you buy it.
For us, it was about $50 all in.
You just have to make sure that you level the two by fours
so it looks nice and tidy in the garden.
I don't know about you guys,
but this turned out a little better than I thought
and I think this cost about $40 all in.
But the real magic is not how the trellis is constructed,
but it's how the tomatoes are tied.
And what we have here is an eye hook
and that is all you need.
So we're pulling a line across
because we need to space our tomatoes properly.
In prior years we've done a Florida weave style trellis
where you're really just kinda cramming tomatoes in
and letting them become one wall of tomatoes.
This year, to prevent disease,
which was a big problem last year,
I'm gonna space my tomatoes about two feet apart, 24 inches
and prune them to single leaders.
We're gonna show you how we tie those in a second
but the reason is I want more airflow,
I'm growing overall less tomatoes
so I wanna make sure the tomatoes I am growing
are getting their best chance at success.
So right now, we're just spacing this out
so we can put the eye hooks up above.
- So I'm in here picking out some of these tomatoes,
and on this kind of trellis system,
it doesn't matter if there are different heights
like you would care about on the Florida weave,
so I'm just choosing the best looking varieties
and I'll bring them out.
(lively music)
(drill whining)
- What we're doing is spacing it a foot off
of the major posts,
and then two feet apart as we go down,
and just using a pile hole screw and an eye hook in,
super simple, could not be easier.
It's time to get to planting,
and there are two different methods
that use more or less the same tools.
The simplest one is the one Jacques' gonna show you
and that's just twine or really any kind of line at all.
So Jacques, you take this. - Perfect.
- We've got a San Marzano tomato,
which you started from seed,
one of the most delicious saucing tomatoes out there,
and what I'm gonna start out by doing is just digging down.
So you've got our eye hook up there,
we're gonna dig down much like you would any tomato.
It's not mandatory to dig it deep, but why not?
- If the soil's already warmed up,
there's no downside to burying deep.
If the soil's cold don't go too deep, it'll slow it down.
- But here's where this method takes a bit of a twist.
Already, you could mess up by just going ahead
and planting it and covering it up.
- Right. - Talk to me.
- So what I like to do
is just go ahead and bury the string right in the hole,
and then the root ball is going to act as an anchor
to keep that twine in place
as we actually trellis off of it.
- Okay, so I'll put a little coil at the bottom here,
just enough to kind of anchor it out.
- Perfect. - And we'll go to there,
which I'm pretty comfortable with that.
Yeah, that looks pretty good.
And now I'm gonna fill around it.
- [Jacques] I do like one circle around.
- [Kevin] You do a loop like this?
- [Jacques] Yeah, just one
just to keep it close. - There we go.
- Perfect. - Simple but important
to get the detail right.
- So on this method we are doing the twine wrapped method,
and the important distinctions are this,
when you get to a leaf node, you want to go underneath
so that when the pressure of the string is coming up,
it's pulling on this and not so much on the stem.
It doesn't really matter if it's pulling on the stem,
but what it does matter is when you get up to a flower node.
So I'm gonna do two wraps here, start working my way up.
- [Kevin] This one is so simple
because you just don't need much besides knowledge
of the plant to do this. - Exactly.
I'm gonna fake it here just to show you the example,
but if you do have a flower node,
where you have the flowers actually coming off the stem,
I wanna make sure this twine is sitting
above that flower cluster.
Because if it's sitting underneath,
the pressure from that could break
your flower cluster- - It will.
- [Jacques] And you'll lose all your tomatoes.
- [Kevin] Yeah, it will.
I mean, I think especially when you're growing
an indeterminate tomato,
maybe you're growing a cherry or something like this,
that friction of the twine against the stem
as the wind and the elements sort of hit it
and weight is attributed across the whole plant,
it will actually rub it right off.
- And I've seen it happen.
- Yeah, and it's, you know, come on,
it's tomatoes guys, it's painful.
So Jacques, as we go up,
how do I make sure I have enough line
that it keeps, you know, I have enough slack?
- Exactly, so let's go up top,
I'm gonna pass it through the hook,
and you're gonna actually need quite a bit of slack,
and I'm short, so I need a ladder.
- Okay, you grab a ladder.
So you could make a mistake here
by just cutting it right here and making a tie, right?
- Exactly, so we want slack,
because every time you wrap the tomato around the stem,
you're actually decreasing
the length of the string. - You're losing line down.
- So let's go a bit extra.
So I'm gonna let a lot of slack through
just to give ourselves plenty of breathing room here.
- Yeah, give yourselves,
you can never go wrong with having too much.
- Exactly, you have a couple different knot options.
I'm gonna do a clove hitch,
'cause I'm really bad at tying knots.
- See how this tomato has already kind of,
psh, perked up? - Yeah,
so watch, whoop.
- Yep, there where you go. - That's
what's keeping it tight, that's the support.
So clove hitch, look it up.
But the other option is a tot line hitch.
So the clove hitch, you kind of do this kind of loop.
- This is an epic knots
because both Jacques and I are extremely weak
at tying this. - You're way better than I am.
- Yeah, but my memory fades every time
I do it. - Exactly.
- It just disappears on me.
- So this is the part where I always forget,
you have to pass this through somewhere.
So the idea behind whatever knot you do
is that the knot that you select has
to be able to release slack,
but it also has to be able to stay tight
- Jacques tied a knot that unties itself.
- Exactly.
So here it is nice and tight,
it's a perfect clove hitch, just as I expected,
and it's not letting any slack through.
And then what you do is you loosen it up here,
you release the slack,
and then you drop the string. - You drop it.
- Now once you have slack,
you can do another wrap. - Do a weave.
- Exactly. - Yep.
- Once you do your wrap, then you pull it back tight,
and your tomato is now upright again.
- So the San Marzano's now in the ground, Jacques,
I'm gonna move one over
and I'm gonna do the other paste tomato that we have
which is the Amish paste tomato
and I'm gonna show you a method that does not require you
to do this part or even the wrapping part,
but it does require you to purchase one small piece of gear.
So in I go with an Amish paste, same starting method
where you're just gonna move away a little soil
before you put the tomato in,
throw a little coil a line down.
- And the beauty of this is that as the tomato's growing
the roots will actually grab onto that string
and anchor it really tight. - Hm-mm.
Yeah, it's effectively like you tied it to the ground,
which really, what do you think roots do?
They tie the plant or fix it to the ground.
So in this one, I just need to match the exact height.
So for this one, just give yourself enough slack
that you can comfortably thread it through.
You do want it to be tight, just like that.
I'm gonna give it just a double overhand knot,
I don't think I need to do anything too crazy here,
but there are those self constricting knots
that you may want to try.
But in this case,
something like this should be totally fine.
So if you want to avoid some of the tying shenanigans,
you can use this tomato clip,
it's a tried and true technique.
The magic of this is
that this little connection point will actually clamp down
on the string.
And that's where I see a lot of people go wrong with this,
they just forget to slot it in right there.
So you'll see what I mean in a second.
If I go ahead and bring it in like this and clamp it,
it actually stays right there,
and sometimes when you install these,
I confess, the first time I ever tried these
I didn't really realize that was part of the feature,
and so I just clipped it around the tomato like this
and like tried to put it on a stem,
it just didn't work out that well.
So what you can do is come here and every few inches or so,
you want to clamp your tomato and your stem just like that.
And as you come up,
you just keep doing it to that main stem
and take your other suckers off
and you're really good to go.
It's the simplest way and these are extremely cheap,
you can buy 'em pretty much anywhere.
There are a million ways to trellis,
this one's about $40 all in for the materials,
and if you don't even want to do the trellis,
you can just do the twine
and it's about 5, maybe 10 bucks.
If you want to see more tomato stuff,
check out our tomato pruning tips and tricks video.
Until next time, good luck in the garden,
and keep on growing.