Growing tomatoes are easy but growing the best tomato plants are not. In fact, there are so many methods in growing the tomatoes that the beginner gardener of tomato may find it so difficult to know which one is the best one to follow. Among the other vagetables, tomatoes are one of the plant that has the most varieties, therefore in order to be able to grow different varieties, there should be different method. One of the things to talk about is weather to use tomato stakes, tomato cage or tomato trellis to grow your tomato. Or, simply let them grow on the ground. Each of the method mentioned has their own disadvantages and advantages, so one method may be more beneficial for one variety compared to the others.
If you happen to have the privilege of having quite a large space, then the easiest way is just to let the tomato plant grow without doing anything to them or on the other words, let them sprawl. This technique is how nature does everything and this has proved to be one of the best techniques for most varieties to be able to produce the most fruits. However, this technique has two main disadvantages. Disadvantage number one is the fact that it needs a lot of room and thus this in not suitable for the tight gardens.
The next disadvantage is that the sprawling lets the fruits to be in contact with the soil and this often causes some tomato problems such as the fruit rot. There are ways to help to reduce the risk of such problems such as the application of mulch under the plants. However, this is only to reduce and not to completely remove the risks. And when you do not need the effort to stake or cage the tomatoes, this method will make you apply the mulch.
Building the set of stakes will help the tomato plants to grow tall. This is especially useful for the tall varieties of tomatoes such as the grape tomatoes that can grow to 9 feet tall. The stakes will become the support for the tomato plants and take the fruits away from the ground in order to avoid some issues. And on the contrary to the sprawling method, the staking of tomatoes will need some extra production cost, but this would be worth it for the tighter gardens. In fact, this is the efficient way of growing tomatoes.
