Decided to build a self irrigating bucket system this year. The tomatoes seem to love it and even though I’m removing suckers, they really really grew fast. How many lead should I keep?
by Conformula
6 Comments
Davekinney0u812
On my indeterminate plants I remove as many as I can’t provide support for – or prune if airflow is an issue.
Have you considered support for when they grow tall? Your plants are growing rather close together and they’ll be growing into each other soon – which blocks airflow and can promote disease.
stiffneck84
Do you have the plans for that setup?
jakesdad21
Last year I grew in raised beds and grow bags and was picking every sucker I could that wasn’t setting fruit. They grew to be incredibly tall to the point my 6ft stake couldn’t handle them. This year past a couple inches off the mulch I leave everything and have been setting fruit crazy early
I think this bucket system would work amazing for peppers but for tomatoes they just grow to be so wide and like another person said, they’ll start running into eachother and getting diseased and stressed
Intelligent_Swan_577
It will be hard to harvest tomatoes off of indeterminate plants in the back row. They will get out of reach quickly. I’m short, I would have to use a ladder. You can however buy pliable fencing and make your own tomato cages by snipping off desired width and rolling them, tie wrapping them and placing the rolled fencing into the buckets. I hope that makes sense.
hughdaddy
The spacing for single stem growing is like 12-24″ between plants so the current setup seems to dictate you prune to a single stem.
Run some airplane wire about 6-8 ft above the buckets is what I’d do. If you extend the wire to the left & right that buys you space to train the vines away from each other in which case, you could maybe even prune the outer buckets to two stems.
6 Comments
On my indeterminate plants I remove as many as I can’t provide support for – or prune if airflow is an issue.
Have you considered support for when they grow tall? Your plants are growing rather close together and they’ll be growing into each other soon – which blocks airflow and can promote disease.
Do you have the plans for that setup?
Last year I grew in raised beds and grow bags and was picking every sucker I could that wasn’t setting fruit. They grew to be incredibly tall to the point my 6ft stake couldn’t handle them. This year past a couple inches off the mulch I leave everything and have been setting fruit crazy early
I think this bucket system would work amazing for peppers but for tomatoes they just grow to be so wide and like another person said, they’ll start running into eachother and getting diseased and stressed
It will be hard to harvest tomatoes off of indeterminate plants in the back row. They will get out of reach quickly. I’m short, I would have to use a ladder. You can however buy pliable fencing and make your own tomato cages by snipping off desired width and rolling them, tie wrapping them and placing the rolled fencing into the buckets. I hope that makes sense.
The spacing for single stem growing is like 12-24″ between plants so the current setup seems to dictate you prune to a single stem.
Run some airplane wire about 6-8 ft above the buckets is what I’d do. If you extend the wire to the left & right that buys you space to train the vines away from each other in which case, you could maybe even prune the outer buckets to two stems.
[Here’s my ridiculous trellis setup I installed this year.](https://imgur.com/a/AMrTQsL)
All of them