Espalier Tomatoes!

[Bigmallly]

OMG I hear you say, what is he doing now?.................................well, I shall enlighten you, are you sitting comfortable, good, then we'll begin...............never mind shouting "Get on with it".................
Reet, I currently have 6 Cordon Toms growing in one of the kites, my plan is to grow them as the pic below. Plant 1 to 5 will grow up as normal but will have 2 sideshoots tied in to the right of the plant to around 3-4ft (that may change). Plant 6 will grow up as normal with no sideshoots tied in. Now it's your turn to shoot me down...........

[Thelma Sanders]

In Greece they just fan train them on metal mesh fencing, much easier lol

[Bigmallly]

There already planted Thelma, if it works, what I would like to do is plant 3 Toms & have 4 sideshoots , 2 to the left & 2 to the right plus the growing tip..............that's maybe for next year.

[Scarlet]

I think you need more horizontal wires...unless the plants are several feet apart?

[Bigmallly]

The plants are about 3 ft apart Scarlet so I'm hoping to get the armpits to around 5ft.

[Scarlet]

I often do a double cordon starting the armpit from as low as possible - I dig the tom in deep. The main stem is tied onto a bamboo came, the side shoot I face towards the centre of the GH and this stem gets the string treatment tied to the apex. It gets really mad and I have to cut lots of foliage off to get enough air flow. OH dare t go in for fear of breaking something off

[Baldy]

As I understand it espalier / multiple cordon Toms are more popular in sunnier climes than Blighty? If that's right it might suggest you'll have to be ferociously fastidious with the foliage...
I could well be mistaken though...

[Containergardener]

I havnt a clue , I've had arms I've tied in all over the place and tbh I prefer that randomness.
Love your idea, anything other than the norm makes me smile ..will follow with interest BM.

[Bal]

Looks good to me, but what do I know. (I just love your mad experiments. We will have to call you prof Mally)

[Bigmallly]

If that's right it might suggest you'll have to be ferociously fastidious with the foliage...

There's a lot of f's there Balders but point taken.

[Penellype]

Tomatoes left to nature would fall over and grow from horizontal stems, with the fruit resting on the ground and the sideshoots growing upwards until they became too heavy and fell over too.

I see no reason why training the shoots horizontally would not work to some degree, but I think you will find that the sideshoots from these grow upwards very strongly at the expense of the fruit and would therefore need to be removed immediately. From my own experience I would also expect the tip of the shoot to attempt to grow upwards, and training it to stay horizontal might be challenging.

Good luck with it - I look forward to hearing how you get on.

[mothhawk]

So....you want to keep the side shoots horizontal? So that plant one's shoot will grow all the way along to plant six? And ditto 2,3,4, and 5? That makes five stems all along the same wire doesn't it, or am I missing something obvious?

Or will you allow each shoot to grow halfway towards the next plant then allow it to go upwards? Wouldn't it be easier to just nip out the shoot and shove it in the ground midway between the two plants?

Or as I did last year, lay the original stem along the ground and lightly bury it (as if layering) and allow all the armpits to grow up, giving each its own support.

[Bigmallly]

So....you want to keep the side shoots horizontal? So that plant one's shoot will grow all the way along to plant six? And ditto 2,3,4, and 5? That makes five stems all along the same wire doesn't it, or am I missing something obvious?

Plant 1's armpit will be nipped off in between plants 2 & 3 and so on as marked by the stars. Plant 5's will be nipped off after plant 6, plant 6 will have no armpits.

[mothhawk]

I agree with Penellype that it will take some work to keep the shoots horizontal for 4 or 5 feet - you'll be tying them down every day, I reckon. It'll be an interesting experiment to see if you get lots more toms that way.

[Bigmallly]

Time is something I have in abundance MH, depending how they behave I may even consider growing a secondary armpit vertically between the main plants................we'll see. My main concern is blight as they are grown in a netted polytunnel, I lost every plant last year.