Tomato support made with HORTOMALLAS® grow netting
Solanaceous plants need a tomato support made with HORTOMALLAS® grow netting. Depending on the variety of seeds planted, the netting can be narrow in width for a tomato trellis height of 75 to 100 or 150 cm (30 to 39 or 59 inches) in the case of tomatoes of determinate growth and as much as 3 meters (almost 10 feet) for indeterminate varieties. The advantage of HORTOMALLAS® grow netting over natural-fiber twine is that the latter is labor intensive (adding cost) be it for the initial installation or for the daily chore of training the tomato plants to the twine.
This chore of training, besides being costly in labor, can be the cause of transmitting virus and other pathogens since physical contact is made with the plant. Hands that come into contact with a diseased plant become vectors for transmitting the disease creating an exponential growth of the disease in the crop. This can happen outdoors or in a greenhouse. For this reason (and also to prevent stress to the plant itself, which happens when the plant is manually trained to twine trellising) it is advisable to let the tomato plant grow between two panels of grow netting in a “V” configuration without manual manipulation (except for pruning), thus allowing the plant to focus on getting nutrients to the fruit.
Clearly a HORTOMALLAS® tomato trellis is the best tomato support since it supports the weight of the plant and fruit by the fruit’s stem, unlike twine where the stalk is clipped to the trellising and the weight of the cluster of tomatoes then bends over its stem and chokes off the flow of nutrients that passes through the stem and feeds the fruit. With the HORTOMALLAS® tomato support method, the weight of the cluster brings it to rest on a square of the netting without the stem bending over.
