Instead of staking tomatoes cascade them over a raised bed

[Tim C]

That's handy Stevo.
I have a couple of self sown ones about a foot high. Most of my first planting copped snails then hot weather. Put another lot of seeds in at random, then we got 72mm rain in 2 sharp storms, so I have stuff coming up everywhere, where the seeds got washed to. We had 41C here yesterday and it's meant to reach 44C today. Challenging conditions, to say the least. The ground has only just warmed up enough for chillies and capsicums to germinate.
I eventually got 4 out of 10 African Giant kettle gourds up, but only 1 out of 12 Caveman gourds.
The Giant gourds, I will clamp one/some of the fruits between two boards, so it grows flat, to try and make a guitar body. Should be an interesting exercise. A tribal-style Double-bass guitar maybe if it gets big enough.

 

[stevo]

guitars need a new build thread with photos

 

[Mark]

Tomatoes usually grow well initially anyway - I think the overhead watering thing is a myth actually... They'll grow fast and strong as long as they have enough feed and water then as the fruit begins to grow and ripen the plant develops blight which drops the leaves exposing the fruit to extra sun helping it to ripen and in turn show its ready to eat. Tomatoes and blight go together like ham and sandwich

I'd be worried if the plants don't get to fruit stage then there's a problem but leaf diseases etc after fruiting has begun is quite normal in my opinion and whilst overhead watering in excess might exacerbate the issue I don't think focusing on it is the miracle cure to awesome tomatoes.

 

[Mandy Onderwater]

I think this would be a good addition to this thread, continueing to show Mark's successed with this;

 

[Grandmother Goose]

More thread necromancy, excellent!

If someone had a high enough deck, balcony, ladder, scaffolding or other way to get oneself high enough in the air to do this with, one could hypothetically get an old 2-3m tall steel water tank, cut the bottom and top off it, put something around the top edge for safety, fill it up just like it's a very tall raised garden bed, and hang tomatoes over the edge of that. The picking of the tomatoes could be done from the ground. The filling the tank, planting, mulching, weeding and watering would need to be done from above (hence the need to have a platform/ladder/balcony/etc), but I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work. Most people don't trellis their tomatoes to grow more than 2-3m tall, so having them hang the same distance... and if they get too long they could be looped back to the top of the tank and pinned so they could root and if really vigorous they could grow all the way down again rinse and repeat.

Alternatively, find a way to raise a raised garden bed a metre or two off the ground, by building a deck for it...?

 

[Mandy Onderwater]

I could almost imagine castcading a tomato off a balcony. Or perhaps off of a raised patio