GROW YOUR GARDEN "UP" AS NATURE INTENDED

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Better is to stake tomatoes with loops of jute, hemp, or cotton twine that will hold for the summer but can be snipped away from the stake to burn or rot away along with the old vines. To tie vines to stakes, cut string into easy-to-handle footlengths... pass around tomato stem and stake .... make a simple overhand knot ...tighten to a loose loop ...and secure with another overhand to make a granny knot. For best production from determinates, mulch and remove all "suckers"—small stems that sprout in the Y made where each fruiting stem grows out from the central leader.

Real Tomatoes

In my view, plant breeders removed most of the flavor and aroma from tomatoes when they reselected and hybridized out the rank-growth habit. When I have the space, I prefer to grow oldfashioned open-pollinated standard (nonhybrid) varieties that retain the natural, indeterminate growth.

They put out suckers and suckers on the suckers—each one yearning to become a new plant and would produce flowers and fruit year-round if they could. This makes sense in their cool but hard-frost-free Andeshighland home where the plant is a perennial. But not up north, where runner-grown plants can't hope for the four or five months' warm weather needed to develop the root structure to produce fruit. Besides, once runners find soil and are able to take root, the mother plants revert to their aggressive ground covertype vining nature. One or two really vigorous plants can take over your whole garden—but without producing many fruit.

I have tried staking indeterminates but ended up sinking a half dozen additional stakes in a circle around each plant ...then having to wade through a sea of stickysnaggy, easily-broken foliage to locate ripening fruit. Better is to make tall wide bins or cages and guide stems up and out for support ...but be sure to turn back or lop off runners that get out of bounds before they reach the soil. A set of interlocking panels can be fashioned into any size or shape "modular" cage for tomatoes, as well as cucumbers, peppers, or other rangy vine or bush. The illustration shows one pattern that can be made from inexpensive wood lath or lattice and common pine lumber. With a simple hook-and-eye hinge, homefashioned from stiff wire at each edge, the 1 1/2' x 3' panels with six-inchspaced lattice work in-fill can be connected into triangles, squares, or larger shapes to accommodate any size plant. If you garden is in the high-rent district where appearance can be important, even in the veggie garden, the cages can be built artfully, hinged with brass hardware and painted or stained to match the gazebo.

Varieties

R. H. Shumway's big catalog has the best selection of indeterminate tomato varieties I know of (more than I could locate in the 300-plus varieties offered in the "Totally Tomatoes" specialty catalog that they—and several other seedsmen—semi-customize and distribute under their name). I like to try the old varieties of slicing and paste/sauce tomatoes with names like Hillbilly from Amish country and the Appalachian Mountains. The oldest and most reliable indeterminate varieties are listed in the source list.

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