hey everybody sam here and welcome back to green acre homestead
i'm here in the greenhouse which is my new favorite hangout spot in the
backyard of our one acre homestead and i'm here with my tomato plants today
i want to show you guys how i have trained them to grow
up strings in our greenhouse stay tuned now these are determinate species
tomatoes if you don't know there's two types you can have indeterminate
or determinate in theory determinant only grows a certain amount or a certain
height or certain size and they're done indeterminates will
grow and grow and grow and grow i say in theory because these
determinate tomatoes are pushing four feet tall and are not showing any
signs of stopping growing that is perfectly fine with me the more
these guys want to grow the more tomatoes they want to produce i
am a-okay with that one trust me
since i'm up here in a greenhouse where it's a permanent structure the backbone
of this trellis system is going to be half inch galvanized emt
rigid conduit it's basically metal pipe used in electrical sections of
home improvement stores and then to attach it i'm going to be using some
little half inch straps that are made for these
pipes as well they clip right on pretty secure and
then you can screw it and attach it to your
in my case rafters of the greenhouse what this will do
is form a backbone that will go along the line with the plants and then allow
me to do my string trellises down from there
i can move them i can adjust them and this will be a permanent addition to the
greenhouse that will be used as long as the screen house is in use
let's hop up on the ladder measure out and install these things
so
so it's been a couple of weeks since i first put up the tomato strings here
and as with a lot of our videos as far as
things of this nature i try to let it kind of sit for a while
and give some time for things kind of work out and also
have more stuff to show you guys so this is an example of that it's been a couple
of weeks and the tomatoes have grown and i'm now
able to come back out and i've just dropped down a couple more
strings from up top from those pipes the reason i'm doing that is some of
these tomatoes are branching and i want to keep as many as i can and
it doesn't make sense to take the branches and force them back
to one string so i'm gonna drop down some new ones like i've done
here and go ahead and let the branches go on their own on their own
string
so
as far as the tools you need for this it's pretty easy you want to have a
structure or something that you're dropping the strings down from
so in theory if you're looking to grow tomatoes this method you've already got
either a greenhouse maybe a pergola or an arbor or something
where your tomatoes are that you can hang the strings down from
and then you just need some garden twine and these special little plastic clips
now these clips are designed to pinch the twine
in the innermost part of the hinge you can see back there how it kind of gets a
little bit pinchy that's where it bites onto the string
and doesn't slide up and down after that you just finish
closing it around the tomato and it clips in place this allows it to
slide up and down the tomato branch allows the plant to grow and move and
doesn't restrict it or anything and then having the little tab here
they are able to be released moved repositioned
taken off at the end of the harvest and saved for next year the clips aren't
really that expensive since they're reusable it's a little
more easy of a pillow to swallow i guess you could say
i got a pack of hundred and i have one two three four
six seven eight nine two eleven twelve i got a pack of a hundred clips for my 12
tomato plants and i'm about out so i probably should
have gotten about 150 maybe 200 at most that being said it all
depends on how frugal or freely giving you might be
as far as installing the clips and your mileage will vary
there you go guys that is my method for growing determinate tomatoes
vertically in a greenhouse i've got to say i really like this i like the bars
up top i can definitely see myself adding
more later as i fill out the greenhouse especially come fall in winter time
right now the greenhouse is pretty open i've got things around the perimeters
you know we have our strawberries water barrels
got some carrots here down at the bottom i got the tomatoes along the long wall
with the majority of the floor open now come winter time i will pack stuff in
here tighter because that's when it's really going to
start doing its job as far as having a greenhouse out here on our property
that being said if i grow some more tomatoes cucumbers or things that grow
vertically i'll definitely add some more poles and
drop down some more lines if you have any questions or comments
you guys know what to do leave them down below
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and pretty much everything else you can think of appreciate you guys watching as
always i'll see you next time on the homestead
do you guys want to see something crazy
really all right bonus footage this is what's
going on in the background as i'm shooting my outro
we have santalunes pantaloons a chicken upside down
getting uh well her bottom you know bottom
feathers clip because she's dirty because she's a big girl
all right turn her right side up
this is the mascot of the the homestead pantaloons
she doesn't lay that many eggs anymore she's kind of old and
i think she knows that we we ain't gonna do nothing to her
you need a big old pot of sticker in though she's a big chicken
she is but she follows me around like a dog
yep
see you guys
you