Espalier Tomatoes!

[mothhawk]

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.

So are you going to let the armpit's armpits grow up to produce toms, or looking to get trusses along the horizontal length of original armpit? I'm confused again. (It doesn't take much)

[Bigmallly]

Ok, Imagine I am only growing 2 plants. They will grow vertically as normal, one armpit will be trained along a wire for about 5ft, a second armpit will be trained along a wire for about 5ft..............I may then consider growing a 3rd armpit from the 1st armpit to grow vertically in between the main plants...........hope that makes sense.

[mothhawk]

OK, BM, got it, I think

[Bigmallly]

Great, can you remind me later when I've forgotten?.....................

[Snoop Puss]

I've grown cherry tomato side shoots horizontally in the way you describe without any problem. This was years ago when I had the plants in large pots. I knew absolutely nothing about growing anything and just assumed the plants would know better than me about how they should grow, so I let just about all their side shoots grow. I have no idea now how we managed to support the horizontal canes (when you know nothing, you just make it up as you go along). I do recall we had an absolutely enormous crop. So I can't see why it wouldn't work if you keep tying them in regularly.

Nowadays, I grow toms in the ground outdoors a bit more conventionally. My plants are closer together than yours, BM. Probably about 18 inches. My supporting structure is the traditional one here: two rows of canes leaning in at an angle and crossing about seven feet up, with a horizontal cane at the point where they cross and tied to the other two. Where I live, it is extremely windy, so Mr Snoop adds lots of bracing canes horizontally and diagonally. They make fantastic extra supports for side shoots. I can have as many as five or six 'stems' on each plant, in part because of my experience with the cherry toms growing horizontally.

I hope your experiment is a success. I'll be interested to see how you do.

[Bigmallly]

That's interesting Snoop, thanks.