fit2btied
Well-known member
When our tomato plants are about 10-12 inches tall we pinch off all but the top few sets of leaves. I put them straight down into the ground with only those leaves and about an inch of stem exposed. My wife lays them in a trench with the same amount sticking out. We haven't noticed any real differences, regardless of who planted them. I put several layers of newspaper all over the ground and right up to the plant stems. I build an A-frame with steel fence posts every 5 feet straddling the row. I cut 10 foot panels of concrete reinforcing wire and lay them up against the posts with just a couple pieces of tiewire to hold them. The concrete wire holds the paper in place. If it's windy when we do this, I just water the paper down to hold it till we can get the wire on it. We put these out in side-by-side rows with the newspaper covering the walking space between the rows also. The newspaper holds in moisture and eliminates weeding. The plants grow up between the A-frames and out through the wire without having to tie them. This is the best lazy-man's 'mater' patch I've ever came up with and I've tried several! Amazing how much work you can do trying to get out of work! I tried sending my cucumber vines up the same wire but it shaded the tomatoes too much so we just use the same type wire panels and send the cukes straight up on steel posts. You don't walk on the vines, don't have to bend over as much, and the cukes grow straighter. We do our pepper plants the same way as the tomatoes, but use those worthless store-bought wire tomato cages to hold the newspaper in place and keep the pepper plants up. Finally got some use out of those tomato cages!
