• Spirals

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2025 1:18 pm**

What do you folks think of using spirals (tough, well-made kind) as a support for your indeterminate toms? Thanks.

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2025 1:55 pm**

You talking about like the ones I made.
The helix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2025 2:02 pm**

Hi. No, not home-made, though the basic design of what you link to strikes me as pretty good. I mean this, which I am starting to suspect is really not tough enough:

https://chinainnovat.en.made-in-china.c ... pport.html

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2025 2:04 pm**

viewtopic.php?t=3333&hilit=Worthless+ga ... 120#p91679

I support mine top and bottom.

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2025 4:48 pm**

I doubt that the thin wire would stay standing up, once a plant gets loaded down with tomatoes.

My thought would be to get some 4X4s, cut to about a foot long, buried to the soil line, with a hole drilled onto it, to fit the straight part of the wire. That 4X4 wouldn't go anywhere.

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2025 5:52 pm**

Tormahto wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 4:48 pm I doubt that the thin wire would stay standing up, once a plant gets loaded down with tomatoes.

My thought would be to get some 4X4s, cut to about a foot long, buried to the soil line, with a hole drilled onto it, to fit the straight part of the wire. That 4X4 wouldn't go anywhere.

LOL. No, I guess it wouldn't "go anywhere"! You know, I am still looking for the perfect EASY method of staking an indeterm. tom. plant loaded with heavy fruit. (I'm a woman and not all that mechanical.) After looking around, I've concluded that the expensive, heavy duty cages would seem to do the trick.

However, heavy duty or not, the 4 legs which are inserted into the soil are still kind of thin and I suspect won't stay if there's a strong wind; the whole thing would collapse. My solution would be to hammer pieces of re-bar into the ground far as I could make them go, then use wire to attach them to 2 of the legs of the cage.

I am renting my back yard and don't want to make any structures (or go to any effort) which I won't be compensated for once I leave this place. The (foldable) cages might do the trick...thanks to both of you for your interest and suggestions!

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2025 7:22 pm**

I have a few and have used them. As long as you keep on top of them and continue to thread the leader up the center it works well. I even let a couple of suckers grow off and tied them to the spiral with twine. Basically the same amount of work as staking. I prefer cages though since I like to let the tops of the plants bush out a bit to protect the fruit from intense sun here in Mississippi.

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2025 9:14 pm**

420Stainless wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 7:22 pm I have a few and have used them. As long as you keep on top of them and continue to thread the leader up the center it works well. I even let a couple of suckers grow off and tied them to the spiral with twine. Basically the same amount of work as staking. I prefer cages though since I like to let the tops of the plants bush out a bit to protect the fruit from intense sun here in Mississippi.

Thanx for all those details and your personal experience. They will be helpful.

By the way, what is the fixation on lopping off suckers - here is my experience of first gardening 32 years ago: I had a large slightly raised bed on good soil and planted 36 Sudduth Brandywines which I started in the house. To this day, I still don't know how I managed. No grow lights or anything, and no knowledge.

Anyway, I didn't know about staking or pruning or anything. I just let them grow, didn't know they were a tall, climbing variety. My parents never grew that kind, everything was bush type so I assumed all toms. were like that. SMH. LOL.

To make a long story short, I had such a magnificent crop of healthy but sprawling-everywhere toms that I had to invite my mum and her friend to come to my place with 5 gallon buckets to take most of my harvest as I didn't know what to do with them. I guess I didn't have a freezer yet at that time, I don't remember.

Posted: **Tue May 13, 2025 6:25 am**

I bought one or two of those spirals to try out, quite a few years ago. They are really useless for our windy climate, and I didn't find them workable for a full sized plant, even in the greenhouse.
The cages that fold, those have been useful for me. But plants still benefit from overhead support as they grow out of them.

Another inexpensive/temporary solution that worked well for bigger indeterminates was to build a row support cage out of bamboo and garden wire. That way you can make it as tall as needed - taller than the folding wire cages anyway.
I did attach a few guy wires to the top as well and hooked those onto a nail or two in the wall for security of those top heavy plants. But that was in the greenhouse where they tend to grow longer and reach for the south. Outdoors here I have to use guy wires on the folding wire cages as well, or it would all blow over.
Bamboo stakes don't last forever but I got about 4 years of them before I had to start cutting off ends.
One thing about making your own structure, you can design it only as high as you can reach or want to. Plants that want to grow taller, you can train them horizontally on the top rail instead.

Posted: **Tue May 13, 2025 7:21 am**

BlackKrim wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 9:14 pm By the way, what is the fixation on lopping off suckers -

I can't speak for others, but in Mississippi we have high summer temperatures combined with very high humidity and sometimes frequent thundershowers. If I don't thin the plants out a little the plants will get diseased early and if I keep them to a single stem I can get sun scald on the fruit since my yard is mostly open to the afternoon sun. I read advice a long time ago to remove all of the leaves and suckers on the lowest foot or so of the plants and since I've been doing that my plants have stayed healthy into August. In the worst summers they still don't make it to fall, but some years they do and keep producing into October. (Indeterminate plants only. Determinates will be done producing here by mid July anyway, so I let them go and only prune them to keep leaves off the ground).

Posted: **Tue May 13, 2025 7:57 am**

Everything you ever wanted to know about spirals but was afraid to ask.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral

Posted: **Tue May 13, 2025 8:46 am**

I have been using wire spirals that I wind myself for over fifteen years. I have the spirals suspended from a structure, and at the bottom I have them attached to the ground with a wire clamp. Sometime in 2014 I posted a description including photos on the Tomatoville website. Unfortunately, this website is no longer functional. If I find any pictures on my computer, I will add them.
Vladimír

Posted: **Tue May 13, 2025 9:18 am**

MrBig46 wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 8:46 am I have been using wire spirals that I wind myself for over fifteen years. I have the spirals suspended from a structure, and at the bottom I have them attached to the ground with a wire clamp. Sometime in 2014 I posted a description including photos on the Tomatoville website. Unfortunately, this website is no longer functional. If I find any pictures on my computer, I will add them.
Vladimír

I was thinking of you when I made my spirals.
I drilled holes in the containers and attached to a wire running from an electric pole to another pole.
Then if the vine out grew the spiral I trained it to run horizontal down the top support wire.
This method allows you to spread out the plant to allow sunlight and airflow.
Lots of pictures in my link in the previous post to the worthless garden thread.
I wound my spirals on my engine lathe.
Wire was free.

Posted: **Tue May 13, 2025 10:59 am**

worth1 wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 7:57 am Everything you ever wanted to know about spirals but was afraid to ask.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral

Hey, you mean that those tom. supports are actually helixes, do I have that correct? They don't expand or contract. I've always known, from school days yet, what a spiral is, so it's not really correct to call those maybe-not-so-hot supports "spirals". But in common parlance, we still call them spirals. Like we all refer to tomatoes as vegetables, when in fact they are fruit.

Posted: **Tue May 13, 2025 12:42 pm**

BlackKrim wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 9:14 pm To make a long story short, I had such a magnificent crop of healthy but sprawling-everywhere toms that I had to invite my mum and her friend to come to my place with 5 gallon buckets to take most of my harvest as I didn't know what to do with them. I guess I didn't have a freezer yet at that time, I don't remember.

I have a faint memory of asking Carolyn Male how she staked her tomato plants. To my surprise she responded that she just let them sprawl.

Google came up with this non-working link---not specific to my question to her.

sprawl.png

Posted: **Tue May 13, 2025 1:18 pm**

BlackKrim wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 10:59 am
worth1 wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 7:57 am Everything you ever wanted to know about spirals but was afraid to ask.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral
Hey, you mean that those tom. supports are actually helixes, do I have that correct? They don't expand or contract. I've always known, from school days yet, what a spiral is, so it's not really correct to call those maybe-not-so-hot supports "spirals". But in common parlance, we still call them spirals. Like we all refer to tomatoes as vegetables, when in fact they are fruit.

You are correct they are a helix.
The helix can be found in many applications such as bolts as an inclined plane.
Interesting enough a spiral staircase is mathematically named wrong.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stairs# ... cal_stairs

Posted: **Wed May 14, 2025 9:58 am**

@zeuspaul

I have a faint memory of asking Carolyn Male how she staked her tomato plants. To my surprise she responded that she just let them sprawl.

Google came up with this non-working link---not specific to my question to her.
sprawl.png

Many thanks for this!!

Posted: **Wed May 14, 2025 10:03 am**

420Stainless wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 7:21 am
BlackKrim wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 9:14 pm By the way, what is the fixation on lopping off suckers -

I can't speak for others, but in Mississippi we have high summer temperatures combined with very high humidity...

Thanks for telling me about your maybe not-so-unique growing situation.

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