Pros and cons of staking vs caging tomato plants

[TheMad_Poet]

Been reading up on staking and pruning suckers as an alternative to caging and never pruning the suckers, which is the only way I have ever grown tomatoes. Supposedly, you can get more plants per area, which would be great for all the new varieties I would like to try this year. But what is the downside to this? My main concern would be sun scald, especially on some larger varieties. I go to the trouble every year of hanging sun blocks on my cages later in the season as the lower leaves die off, and leave the fruit unshaded from the sun. A lot of varieties will get a bleached out look to the fruit. Will this actually change the flavor? It seems to me it does, but not sure since I have used shade material for quite a few years now, as needed. One for instance is Pink Berkley Tie Dye . It is very susceptible to sunscald. I communicated with Wild Boar a few years ago, and they told me PBTD was very susceptible. So I started growing it in pots, under the north side of a tree so that it never got midday sun. The other concern, again for larger varieties, is not enuff support for heavy tomatoes. Although I lose enuff already with cages since the big ones are usually close to the stem anyway. I do add extra support in the form of bamboo sticks ran thru the rungs of the cages and under branches and/or fruit to hold them up. So I will try staking, but maybe only for smaller fruited varieties?? Pics from Sept 2nd, 2022. Lower leaves dead. Yes I know I should have removed them, but had been super busy and let it go too long. All comments welcomed.

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[bower]

I think your thoughts and comments about this are spot on.
The only thing I would add is that staking and pruning as a space saving measure is a lot of work. The amount of pruning is probably more than you think, if you're not a pruner by habit. So you do save some space but you will pay for that with your time. Tomato suckering is relentless. If you have lots of time to pamper your plants it can be fun.
WRT staking and pruning cherries, I think it is a bit of a waste of time and tomatoes to heavily prune the small fruit. Cherries will tolerate crowding, neglect, etc and still produce lots of fruit if you let them sucker freely. To cram some varieties in, you could do a tight row of cherry types that are staked, don't prune too much above the 7th leaf, and give them extra support with a florida weave or similar, if they need it.
OTOH the staking and strict pruning is often recommended for larger tomatoes, and cited to give a better yield. If you always keep the leaf just above a flower cluster, that's supposed to help nourish and shade the fruit. And the vigorous sucker that sprouts just below a cluster, if you're not keeping it as an extra leader you can Missouri prune it instead of removing completely, and keep it short but leafy for extra shade and the natural support for your fruit.
Sunscald certainly does affect fruit quality. Besides caging/not pruning, I've tried different orientation for the rows in my greenhouse, and found that my best arrangement, based on the past two hot and sunny summer seasons, were long rows in E to W orientation with some shade on one side, vs short rows S to N with sun on both sides. So that is another possible thing to experiment with to minimize sunscald, finding an optimal row arrangement that works for your specific environment and conditions.

[worth1]

Speaking of sun scald.
If a variety is prone to it the said variety has no place in my yard.
There are too many out there that don't.
There is another option that is done by one of our members here.
That is winding the vines in a wire hanging from above.
The wire itself is wound into a helix and the vine is wound into that as it grows.
I've actually collected a bunch of this wire from work and going to try it this year.
I just hope I don't wind myself up in the lathe winding up the wire.
Got to be very careful.

[Tormahto]

Perhaps a Florida weave with very tall stakes, so it would be possible to also use shade cloth at times?

[Mark_Thompson]

Location in signature line would help get responses from people roughly in the same zone as you. I grew thirty or so plants pruned to one leader last year and pruning is a lot of work.
If you’re worried about supporting heavy varieties there are little hooks for that, but that just adds to the workload.

[brownrexx]

I like cages because I am lazy and would never keep up with the pruning and tying although I do some tying to the cages so that the plants do not get so heavy with tomatoes that they collapse within the cages. I had that happen a couple of times previously. This has taught me to let some of the side shoots protrude through the cages to help support the plant.

[GoDawgs]

I grow tomatoes in buckets with cages and am hit and miss on pruning. At the beginning of the season I'm pretty careful about pinching out suckers especially on the big growers just to keep the foliage from getting too thick later on. Of course, as the garden gets into full swing I get lax about tomato pruning. Then one day I'll look at them and realize there's too much foliage restricting airflow. Well, I'd rather get into pruning mode than start fighting disease so out come the pruners for a selective haircut.

Now if I could only prune the squirrels.....

[worth1]

With that giant raptor nesting at my place the squirrel population has stopped exploding.
There for awhile it was ridiculous.

[karstopography]

I like staking. I have an unlimited supply of stakes so that helps. I don’t want to deal with storing 25-30 cages once the tomatoes are finished either. I like to fiddle with pruning. Sunscald hasn’t been a major issue mainly because I prune with the idea that I will make sure there is protective foliage shading the fruit.

Most my indeterminates end up really tall by June and would spill over the edges of the cages anyway.

[Yak54]

IMG_1191 Medium.jpeg

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My normal method for growing in cages is that I remove the suckers from the plants up till Aug. 1st. Then after that I let them go. My plants get pretty tall (over 7 ft.) so by the end of August I get out the hedge trimmers and cut the tops with small fruit that won't reach maturity by the end of the season. This allows me to get more ripe fruit on the lower two thirds of the plants by the end of Sept. and keeps a good air flow thru the plants in July and most of August. I grow in 15 gal. grow bags and my concrete wire cages just barely fit around the bags which are about 20" in diameter IMG_1191 Medium.jpeg[attachment=0]

[zeuspaul]

I am not concerned about production. If I need more tomatoes I grow more plants.

I concern myself with limiting my work load especially during the growing season. I have a love hate with cages. I am phasing them out of my garden. However they remain in the container garden. I like the fact that the plants take care of themselves. I don't like the limited access. I made my own with six inch squares. I have gone back and joined four squares to make twelve inch squares. The wind blows them over. Difficult access to the soil in the top of the container. I just don't know a better alternative. I like the Texas Tomato Cages but never opted to spend the money.

I don't like the work associated with the pole method. I want the plants to take care of themselves.

In the garden I like what I call a trellis cage. I leave it in place all year round. It doesn't blow over. I have easy access to the plants and the ground. I can add internal support as need by slipping in boards. I use string tied to a lateral to train a branch upward as needed or sometimes just attach it to a lateral. The center alley width of twenty+/- inches is about right if I want to walk down the middle. I use shade boards along the top if necessary.
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[DriftlessRoots]

I stake and prune so I can grow 39 plants instead of 15. I’ve had sun scald on my peppers but never my tomatoes.

[TheMad_Poet]

Thanx for all the great answers. I may try staking a few just for the experience of doing so. But it sounds like more work than I want, and the sunscald thing. Thought about buying more cement wire and making more cages, that wire has gotten really expensive from the 1st ones I made a dozen years ago, and stacking and storing is a pain. I think I will try the Florida weave. I have 2 acres with 4 older 700 sq ft gardens, not the best soil, but I amended and grew for a few years in those. Open 1 back up and should be good for 50 or so additional plants. I have heard of Florida weave before , and it is just what I imagined it was after reading an article about it and looks pretty simple. I have a huge roll of jute twine, and will buy more rerod, and a hundered bucks or so and I am in business. I will follow up with pics as the year progresses. Excited to get started for the new season. PS on the pics. I trim the lower leaves on all plants. Later in the season the critters started taking bites outa my brandywines, and I had a lot of low hanging fruit yet. So I put the plastic netting around a couple of the raised beds, which made it difficult to trim on a regular basis as the season progressed. I got tired of undoing the netting to get at the pruning. I have problems with sparrows pecking holes also, so nets helped with that also. I use cement wire cages with a 4' section of rerod, weave the 1st rung and last rung over the stake and press or step down to lock in place. Never had one blow over.

[zeuspaul]

I hope you have a good quality jute. I purchased three different ones to use in the garden. All three were of inconsistent quality and had areas that didn't have much strength. I settled on cotton butcher twine, 30-ply which holds up well for me. I have no expertise with Florida weave I only tried it once. I do believe you will want a quality twine.

[FarmerShawn]

Well, I'm a bit obsessive with tomatoes, I guess, as I grow over 1,000 plants ( about two plants per variety, for the most part), about 200 in a greenhouse and the rest outdoors. The greenhouse ones get tied to string trellises with the plastic clips. I tried just winding the vines on the strings, but when the fruit got heavy, they slipped down into a pile on the ground. Not good!
Outside, I set a stake every third plant in the row, and run horizontal poly baling twine every 8" - 12" along the stakes. I then hitch the growing vines to those horizontal lines with a Max Tapener trellising tool (a truly magic implement!). I start out pruning to two stems, but soon get too busy to keep up, and so then I just occasionally go through and haphazardly prune and/or tie whatever is hanging into the pathways. Stems that reach the top grow back down, or along the top horizontally, if there's room.
I worried about using so much plastic twine, but I actually get years out of it. I just wind it up at the end of the season, tie it together as I wind, and then reuse it next year.
So, really, I neither stake nor cage!

[Danny]

I use cages, heavy duty ones that fold flat for storage time, and use a stake or T post to help anchor the cages. Wind can get higher here and big tomatoes can fall over. I prune off any bad leaves, but pretty much leave them be otherwise.

[zeuspaul]

One issue I ran into with my cages was the interface between the cages in my garden and the drip irrigation systems. The drip lines run through the bottom square of the cages.

I leave my cages in place all year round. I didn't plan on the time I would want to remove the cage(s) for some kind of access in the future. Now I have discovered removing the cage to work the soil to remove the weeds requires dealing with the drip tube that runs through a row of cages

So I started removing a row of cages and cutting the lower ring wire so the bottom of the cage is a bunch of points. Now the cage can be placed over the drip line and easily removed and replaced.

However the bottom of the cage is now less sturdy. It doesn't set firmly when the prongs are pressed into the ground. The cages with the bottom rung set more firmly in the ground.

I prefer the trellis-cage (post 11) over my cages.

So now I am in the slow process of replacing the cages with trellis-cages. I am closing down one of the gardens and moving the trellis-cages from one garden to the other. It doesn't help that my t-post puller broke. I am digging around the t-posts with an earth auger and an electric drill

[rossomendblot]

I grow all indeterminates as single stems. An unpruned outdoor tomato plant over here would be a magnet for late blight. We also get at least a couple of 45+mph wind storms in the summer and it can even be a struggle to keep fully loaded single stem plants upright. In the greenhouse, blight isn't really an issue, but really crowded foliage would get hammered by botrytis when the weather starts to get cooler in September. We don't have issues with sunscald in this climate.