The Easiest Tomato Trellis Method EVER

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 going to 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 4x4s and some 2x4s and digging down deep into the soil. And for that, I need the garden boys. And here they are. Ready? Back again. We've got Jock the garden hermit and Paul who has been helping out for a while here at the homestead. Let's get these in the ground. The basic plan, Jock, 4x4s in the ground coming up, 2x4s coming across. We'll use some I-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. 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 4x4 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. 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 2x4 or 4x4 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 2x4s 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 kind of 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 going to space my tomatoes about two feet apart, 24 inches and prune them to single liters. We're going to 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 want to 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 a Florida weave. So I'm just choosing the best looking varieties and I'll bring them out. 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 pilot 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 is going to show you and that's just twine or really any kind of line at all. So Jacques, you take this. We've got a San Marzano tomato, which we started from seed, one of the most delicious saucing tomatoes out there. And what I'm going to start out by doing is just digging down. So you've got our eye hook up there. We're going to dig down much like you would any tomato. It's not mandatory to dig it deep, but why not? If the soil is already warmed up, there's no downside to burying deep. If the soil is 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 going to fill around it. I do like one circle around. You do a loop like this? 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 going to do two wraps here, start working my way up. This one is so simple because you just don't need much besides knowledge of the plant. Exactly. I'm going to 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, you want to make sure this twine is sitting above that flower cluster. Cause if it's sitting underneath, the pressure from that could break your flower cluster and you'll lose all your tomatoes. 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, let's go up top. I'm going to pass it through the hook and you're going to 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 going to let a lot of slack through just to give ourselves plenty of breathing room here. Give yourself, you can never go wrong with having too much. Exactly. You have a couple of different knot options. I'm going to do a clove hitch cause I'm really bad at tying knots. Yep. See how this tomato has already kind of perked up. So watch. Yep. That's what's keeping it tight. That's the support. So clove hitch, um, look it up. But the other option is a taut 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. You're way better than I am. Yeah. But my memory fades every time. 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, so here it is nice and tight. It's a perfect clove hitch, just as I expected. Yeah. 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 this string. Once you have slack, you could 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 is now in the ground Jacques. I'm going to move one over and I'm going to do the other paste tomato that we have, which is the Amish paste tomato. I'm going to 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 going to move away a little soil before you put the tomato in, throw a little coil of line down. And the beauty of this is that as the tomato is growing, the roots will actually grab onto that string and anchor it really tight. Yeah. It's effectively like you tied it to the ground. Yeah. 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. If you do want it to be tight, just like that. I'm going to 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 and 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 them 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 five, 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.