By the last quarter of the 18th century the tomato had gained wide acceptance as a sauce in the newly formed United States of America though it was seldom consumed as a fresh fruit. Once accepted into the garden, however, the difficulty of managing so unruly a plant has confounded gardeners for centuries. The English writer, John Abercrombie observed in The Universal Gardener (1778): unless they have support they will trail upon the ground, and over spread the plants…but being trained against some sunny fence like a wall-tree or to a treilage or stout stakes, they will shew themselves to proper advantage. In North America, Squibb recorded in The Gardener’s Calendar, (produced in South Carolina in 1787) for the month of June: Your tomatoes will now begin to run: they, being of a procumbent growth, should have sticks to support them; which should not be very high, but strong and bushy; first let one stick be set in the middle of the hill, put three or four more round the outside of the plants, to keep them from falling to the ground. The Philadelphia nurseryman, Bernard McMahon gives similar advice: When the plants are grown about six inches, they should have sticks placed to them to run upon… for they will always be more productive in this way, than when suffered to trail on the ground.
These recommendations for supporting the plants with sticks reminded of advice for protecting strawberries from the winter chills recorded in 1573 by the English poet and farmer Thomas Tusser:
If frost should continue, take this for a law,
The strawberries look to be covered with straw
Layed over trim, on crotches and boughs
And after uncovered as weather allows.
Gardeners have long attempted to persuade their tomatoes to stand up straight with stakes and cages but we have found a method that allows them to exercise their natural tendency to sprawl while still maintaining
them in a convenient fashion. When the plants are well grown we build a table of woven sticks for them to run upon and, providing the plants with stakes so that they may grow straight through the sticks, they are allowed to sprawl across the table.
This method worked so well that I have adopted it for my “modern garden” on the Northern Neck of VA. I have substituted a wire mesh for the woven boughs and T stakes for the crotches. The advantage to this system is that I can reuse it year after year. I first plant the seedling tomatoes and then put in the stakes that will hold the wire mesh. Once the tomatoes are established, I lay down a mulch of newspapers, which I cover with
straw, and then provide the plants with guide stakes so that they may grow straight through the wire table, being conscious, as they grow, to pluck off any flowers that arise beneath the table top. Now, I have known (and currently know) gardeners who plant upwards of 50 plants per season, this method is not for them. I typically plant three tomato plants in a season: a beef steak, a medium sized fruit such as a better boy or girl (I am currently growing a variety called raspberry lyonne) and a cherry, or grape, tomato.Once the plants are through the mesh they will relax into a sprawl and, for the rest of the season, I easily pluck fruit from the table
(trimming back the side growth from time to time so that the paths are not blocked). After using this method for over 20 years I have found that cherry tomatoes, which generally do not grow as robustly as a slicer, do not perform as well on a table as they do on a tower, and for the first time this summer, I have had a significant problem with sunscald on the Raspberry Lyonne tomatoes, which, I am guessing, is either due to the brutally hot July that we so recently experienced, or to the prodigious growth and fecundity, no doubt brought about by the same freakishly warm and wet weather, that has exposed so many fruit to the merciless rays of the midday sun.
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