The 4 Effective Tomato Trellis Ideas for Your Garden | Planter RaisedBeds (2024)

FAQs

What is the best trellis for tomatoes in a raised bed? ›

Metal or wood offer great trellis support, and I especially like wood because then I can do a DIY tomato trellis. Metal choices can be metal T posts, a frame structures, and the classic tomato cage. Wood is great to support tomatoes and I love how it looks in the garden bed.

Using a single pole or stake to support the main stem is the best way to keep these plants upright, maintain airflow, and allow for easy access when harvesting. A piece of rebar, a metal stake, or a strong pole will work as vertical support.

Eighteen inches is the minimum height needed for plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, and kale—plants that have a bigger root base and need more nutrients and space to spread out.

To build the trellis, sink poles or 4-inch wooden posts into the ground about 10 feet apart. Be sure that they are deep enough and properly anchored to support the weight of all the tomatoes when laden with fruit. The tops of the posts should be 5 or 6 feet high.

Coffee grounds contain around 2% nitrogen as well as varying amounts of phosphorus and potassium which are all very important for the growth of tomato plants. By mixing some coffee grounds into the soil below your tomato plants you're introducing these nutrients that the plants need to thrive.

Use the single-stake method in a small garden.

A single stake is a simple, low-cost method for keeping plants upright in small spaces. The best method for how to stake tomatoes this way is to use a 5-foot-tall sturdy wood or metal stake for determinate tomatoes and an 8-foot-tall stake for indeterminate tomatoes.

Just drive a 6-foot redwood or cedar 2×2, a length of sturdy bamboo, or a metal T-post about a foot into the ground and plant your tomato about 6 inches away from the stake. As the vine grows, train it to a single stem by gently breaking off any side shoots that emerge from the main stem.

From our experience, the two most effective tomato trellising techniques are using sturdy, square cages and using twine weaved between plants. We use both techniques in our garden, but for different situations. Using cages to trellis tomatoes is a great technique for several different situations.

Vertical trellising is my preferred method for growing tomatoes. To hold up rows of vines from the tallest (indeterminate) varieties, you can use hanging strings to create a vertical trellis. Start by driving in sturdy 8-foot-tall wooden or steel posts at each end of the row and every 6 to 8 feet between them.

What are the disadvantages of trellising tomatoes? ›

Disadvantages of Trellising:

You'll spend more time pruning and training the plants - at least some time each week. You'll harvest fewer tomatoes per plant because some pruning will be necessary. Trellised tomatoes are more susceptible to sun-scald because they get less shade from leafy growth.

We're obviously going to be training their growth upwards, so you don't have to worry about giving them too much room to spread out side to side. Even so, if intensive planting makes you nervous, you can always put just one tomato plant in the center of each side of your trellis, so two plants total per trellis.

We tie lengths of soft garden twine from the bar and train the tomato plants to climb them. When a plant is 18 inches tall, we tie the bottom of a string to its stem and then twist the main stem around the string as it grows. If necessary, we use small plastic tomato clips to hold the stem and the string together.

Dig your hole about 12 inches deep for each plant and work a handful of good fertilizer into the hole. (Heyming also likes to add a banana peel and the shells from one egg into the bottom of the hole to provide extra nutrients for the roots later in the season.) Cut off leaves on the lower half of the main stem.

Proper stringing consists of tying the twine to an end stake, passing the string along one side of the plants, and looping the twine around each stake. When you reach the end of a row continue the same process on the other side of the row. The string must be kept very tight throughout the stringing process.