Anyone else doing the 'florida weave' method of holding up your tomato plants??

[olien]

I have a question if there is anyone else out there.

do you stake your tom as well?? It seems our beefsteaks are to heavy & keep flopping over between the ropes. This is causing much of the fruit to lay on the ground:

[Owen'nZoe]

I'm doing the Florida Weave this year for the first time. I haven't had this problem yet (although, admittedly, we've had a very cool summer, and my toms aren't as vigorous as usual). Are you retightening the ropes periodically to keep them taut?

[serenetabbie]

I am too. I did find that every time I walk past the garden I poke some wayward stem or another back into place, but other than that I have not had any issues. Like On'Z, we are having a very cool summer and our tomatoes are growing slower than in the past.
Hopefully when I get home I will manage to upload my garden photos (which are a week old now and should be re-done I suppose...) and then I can come back and link so we can compare methods

[greengirl_]

Wow, I've never heard of this but it sounds like a great method. It's obviously too late for me now, but for next year this would be great!

My tomato plants got away from me before I could cage them and have been flopping onto the ground. I managed to keep them off the ground by doing a process similar to florida weave with bamboo stakes and twine. It's holding up ok but it's not ideal.

[FarmerCathy]

I so wanted to try this method this year. Didn't even get this far. LOL! I would love to see pictures of others using it though. That would be awesome. I have all the twine to do it.

[Pepper44]

What is this Florida Weave?

This year I tried putting out three of those metal circular stakes with a plant in the middle of each, and plants around the outside, then used twine to tie them all together.

Well long story short, after a cool summer and tons of unusual heavy rain and wind they all fell over in one big heap and smashed my okra and landed in the squashes. Now I have to pick through all those thick leaves to find tomatoes and squash! Everything seems to be flourishing fine, but it's a pain to harvest anything without plunging your face into swarms of bugs!

[Dandelionkid]

I am a newbie to the weave and I am really liking it, although I am in zone 3 and have not had much hot weather so far. As it is- I have tons of flowers and green fruit. Really hope they mature!! Ill probably do this method again but I also go along and tuck up branches. The ones that are growing vertically down on the ground I just leave.

[Quirky]

I've done florida weave this year but I've also got stakes in the middle and on the ends that some of the toms get tied to. So it's kind of a hybrid.

I got to it kind of late -- next year I'd start the weave way earlier. It was a total PITA doing it when the toms were already huge.

I think it's also easier when you have space to get in there and work. Mine are in raised beds and the stakes/ties go across the short way and it's very difficult to get to the middle to work.

[Quaniliaz]

I'm also doing the florida weave on some of my tomatoes this year. To prevent the plants from flopping sideways (within the weave), I've tied the two strings together on either side of the plant - this seems to keep everything up-right!

[tankgirl73]

I'm trying the weave. It's my first time doing tomatoes, period.

I really like it. I've got a few plants that are staked instead, trying different methods to see what works. I think I prefer the weave.

If your plants are really flopping over, I'd think that your rope is too loose.