Trellis for tomatoes. Choosing which tomato training method to use will be based on your personal preferences and the materials you have at hand, this will mostly depend on if you are planning to grow vine or bush tomatoes. Bush or determinate tomatoes grow up to a certain length, which makes methods like caging, or staking, very suitable for training them.

In the other hand, vine or indeterminate tomatoes can grow from 6 to 10 feet (1, 82 to 3, 04 m), so they require more cares and constant pruning. Using trellis for tomatoes makes these tasks much simpler and less frequent.

Trellises not only keep fruit off the ground, preventing very common infections, but also provide the plant of very good circulation, ventilation and sun exposure, which, as you know, is essential for the fruit develop and makes it ripen faster.

Plastic trellises are also perfect if you do not have a lot of space to your disposal or if you simply want to make the most of what you have. Since the plant grows up (instead of around) than can be placed closer than when using other training techniques.

Now, which type of trellising should you use? Again, that will depend on the type of plant you want to grow. If you have determinate tomatoes, horizontal trellising will work well. This would be the same with vine ones, because with this disposition of the trellis it is difficult to prune the plant.

Vertical trellising, instead, is perfect for vine tomatoes; all you would need is a structure on which the trellis can be supported. You can use six to eight feet tall (1, 82 to 2, 43 m) metal posts to secure the trellis for tomatoes at each end of the row.

As tomatoes grow they will probably need a little extra support (especially if you are not using a double trellis wall); plastic rings work even better than ties, since they do not choke the plant. They also prevent infections, are easy to place and can be used from a season to another. It would great if you located the rows north south direction, so that sun rays can equally get to both sides of the trellis for tomatoes.

In addition to the already mentioned improvements the use of trellis for tomatoes provides to your production, there are some more:

• You are able to use more space to grow your plant than if you did it with other methods, or with no training at all. The result: you get more tomatoes in a smaller area.
• It is quite easier to find and pick up ripe crops, since they are hiding inside a messy and leafy bush.
• You waste less fruit, and this has a little to do with the previous point. It is easier to see all the sprouts, even before they ripen, unlike when you use cages.
• You get cleaner, bigger and better shaped tomatoes, since they are off the ground and end up less bruised.
• Fruits become more out of reach of certain bugs than when growing directly on the ground, which lowers the possibilities of contracting pests.
• Your plant is more safe from diseases, since plastic is not a good hiding place for bacteria that usually lodge in in other materials, like raffia, for example.

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