A Short History of My Tomato Staking

What? That title didn't grab you? Don't you want to hear all about my various tomato staking methods over the years?

Oh good! I knew you did.

In my younger, more ambitious, and (most importantly) child-free years, I made some SERIOUS STAKING. Craziness with bamboo and sisal twine. It was really cool-looking and extremely effective for supporting the tomatoes. Win for me.

Then I had a baby. And there goes any time for constructing elaborate tomato scaffolding. I think one year I did a bamboo stake on either side of each plant. That worked okay.

Then there was last year. The Garden Year Which Will Live in Infamy. Last year in the garden sucked--thanks to Charlie's arrival in July--and the tomatoes were no exception. I was under no illusions that I would be properly staking any tomatoes last summer. I knew damn well I wasn't going to be tying up the plants when they needed it. So I had A. put in two posts at the end of each row of tomatoes with fencing in between the posts. The idea being I could maybe pull the plants through the fencing and support them at least a little that way.

That worked about as well as you might expect. That is, it didn't.

Like I said: sucked.

So now what? Thanks to a series of events that's too boring to go into here (WAY more boring than a detailed discussion of tomato staking, which I bet you didn't think was possible), I no longer have a large supply of bamboo stakes. But I still have 25 tomato plants. What to do?

Why, call on my own personal superhero of course: Woodchuck Man.

A. was all, "You need stakes? I'll get you stakes."

So he cut down some small locust trees and used his ax, wedges, and sledgehammer to split them into stakes. Which he then pounded into the ground next to the tomato plants, using the sledgehammer again. He tells me that all tomato stakes used to be split hardwood like that. He can't imagine why nobody does it anymore.

OH REALLY?

Would YOU do all of that? Nope, me neither. But I married someone who would, lucky me. And so now . . .

Bam! Tomato stakes.

Locust wood pretty much never rots, so I can keep using these stakes for the rest of my gardening life. We have locust posts on this property that are at least fifty years old. So these stakes could last longer than I do.

There's a thought.

Enough with the reflections of mortality courtesy of tomato stakes. Point is, the tomatoes are in, the stakes are in, and now the low temperatures just have to get the hell out of the thirties so those plants actually grow big enough to stake.

Anytime, tomatoes. Anytime.