Helping Hand
Tomatoes, the umami fruit. Everybody knows them, some love them, some hate them. Personally, I love myself a good tomato, especially the homegrown ones. Currently we are growing a lot of tomatoes here. I mean, how could we not in this tomato loving country. The greenhouse will be the biggest source of our tomatoes, but also in other parts of the garden we have tomato plants.
Tomatoes are a vining, decumbent, plant which means that instead of climbing it lies on the ground with tips turned upwards. This is probably a different image than you have in mind of a tomato plant. This is because tomatoes are usually staked, tied up or are given any other form of structure. We do this to keep the fruits of the ground and to make harvesting easier. Also, you keep a better airflow (which helps pollination) and ensures that the fruit have more light.
We have some different types of structure we give to the tomatoes as seen in the pictures below.
The trick is to use a softer material to bind to the tomatoes instead of tying a string string directly to the tomatoes since tomato stems are very delicate.
This year we are trying a new type of structure with our cherry tomatoes which is looking really good. This week these tomato plants needed a bit more structure which I gave to them as you can see in the pictures below.
Written by Camil
