Helping tomatoes and cucumbers grow up

By Rennie Phillips

I grew up North of Arthur, Nebraska, in the Sandhills. It was a rural environment where you measured the distance to your closest neighbor in miles. We lived about two miles from the Fryes and about the same from the Hartmans. And with it being rural, pretty much everyone raised a garden. My parents had several gardens. One east of the house was entirely potatoes and about the size of a football field. The garden west of the house was about one-third that size. It was here we raised corn and tomatoes and cucumbers and such.

My brother Mick said he thinks Dad planted Sioux tomatoes, but I can't remember. I remember Dad planting them and watering them. I don't remember him putting any cages on the tomatoes. It seems like they just let the tomatoes grow on the ground. The soil was sandy and average rainfall was only about 20 inches, so growing them on the ground worked pretty well.

Dad did the cucumbers like that as well. They would plant the cucumbers in little hills about three or four feet apart in a row. Then the vines would grow everywhere. I remember it was tough finding the cucumbers and picking them. Some we didn't find until they were huge and had turned yellow.

After I married my wife, we moved to Oklahoma and then Kentucky and later to Missouri. I found that with the increase in rainfall and high humidity, one had to grow the tomatoes up. I first bought some of those wire cages and tried them, and they worked OK, but not the best. Most of the ones I tried were way too short and the tomatoes outgrew the cage. These little wire store-bought cages would kind of work for determinates.

Since I was familiar with pouring concrete, my next cages were out of concrete reinforcing wire. It was about 5 feet tall, so about perfect. I made my cages about 16 inches in diameter, which was about perfect. I'll bet at one time we had way more than a hundred of those cages in Scott City, where we now live. They work really well to grow most tomatoes. We grew our cucumbers on the ground until we moved out where we now live. It was here we started to grow the cucumbers on cattle panels. These panels are 52 inches tall and 16 feet long.

When we constructed the high tunnels, I read about how one could hang a string down from above, secure the string to the ground and then wrap the string around the tomato plant as it grew. I tried it and it works. Awesome way of staking one's tomatoes. I bought some neat little deals that hook on a wire run along the rafters. They also have a spool of string you unroll down to the tomato. They work. Now I just flip a piece of plastic baling string over the rafter or wire run along the rafters and let it hang down to the tomato. They are cheap and they work and are super simple.

By having the tomato on a string support, it allows me to work with the tomato more than in a cage. I can trim off the suckers and pollinate the tomato easily. I tried growing some tomatoes outside the tunnel last year, with them growing up a string. It worked, but not like I wanted it to. This year I'm going to use a 3/8-inch rebar from Kelso Supply about 7 feet long. Push the rebar in the ground a foot or so and grow the tomato up the rebar. I'll support the top of the rebar with metal T posts. I buy small "vine clips" from Morgan County Seeds, which I will use to secure the plant to the rebar. I'll know by fall if it works.

We plant all our cucumbers up against cattle panels and then force the vines to climb the panels. Some cucumber varieties work better than others, but most will climb right up a cattle panel. You can buy these panels from Tractor Supply Co. or Buchheit or Orscheln. You will need some metal T posts to attach the panel to. I put four T posts per panel, which is 16 feet long. Figure four T posts in the first panel and then three for the next if you go end-to-end on the panels. I secure the panels to the T posts with plastic baling string, but you can use wire. A 10,000-foot roll of string is about $20 to $30. It will last a while. If the cucumber doesn't want to climb the panel, I secure it to the panel using vine clips, which I use on the tomatoes. A bag of 500 is $7 and a bag of 1,000 is about $11 plus shipping.

I have grown cantaloupe on cattle panels and it works rather well. Most of the fruit will be on the ground, which was surprising. A few will be higher, but not many. I put down paper and straw on one side of the cattle panel, so I only have weeds and such on one side. It sure cuts down on the amount of hoeing. If a cantaloupe starts to grow off the ground, simply make a small wire shelf for it to grow on. It's a pretty easy fix.

If you have questions or comments, drop me an email. If you have a better way of staking your tomatoes or getting your cucumbers to climb, drop me a note. I'd love to check out your gardening. Most of my gardening know-how is by reading, visiting with friends and trial and error. Seems like a lot of trial and error.

Until next time.