Holy tomatoes!!

[Dixana]

Before I started my little experiment in seed starting, I had read yellow pear tomatoes were prone to loads of diseases.......so I started a lot of them.
Three plants made it into the ground before the discovery of all the cement. I sure am glad it was only three!! I ate my first ripe one today (YUMMMMM!!) and counted 132 others at various stages before I got sick of counting. To top that off, as a result of our last big rains there is more yellow on those plants than there is green! The remaining plants will be going into the compost instead of the ground for sure.
I do wonder though.... The plants got so big so fast I had no time to cage or stake them. They have run wild, laid branches all over, put roots into the ground off of said branches, etc. Would they be producing this well had they been caged or staked??

[TZ -OH6]

Yellow pear plants have been known to take over small neighborhoods no matter how they are supported if given good conditions. Its still pretty early in the season for diseases to start killing off things so keep your fingers crossed.

[gixxerific]

Not sure on that specific type but I normally let a few go wild, cause I run out of stuff to stake them with. The ground dwellers never do as well as the staked ones to me. Even if they might do well a lot of the fruit rots. But sounds like you are doing good so take what you can get.

[Ozark Lady]

Uncaged always outproduce caged for me, and have less disease and drought issues. But, they do have rot issues, I just grab a rock and stick it under the various clumps of tomatoes. Keep them up off of the ground and they do alot better.

I have my tomatoes in cages for the most part this year, simply because they are in containers and I need walking room!

[gixxerific]

Uncaged always outproduce caged for me, and have less disease and drought issues. But, they do have rot issues, I just grab a rock and stick it under the various clumps of tomatoes. Keep them up off of the ground and they do a lot better.

That is interesting since I was thinking the other way around. I'm not saying you are wrong in any way. As usual I have a few that will more than likely be ground dwellers I will have to pay more attention to them and see how they do maybe that was the problem.

[Duh_Vinci]

Grew it last year, literally wanted to take over everything around itself! Lots of fruit, but started getting sick early for me, and by the end of August I pulled it out. Hope you have better luck with it! Looks great on dropped by a handful into the fresh salad plate!

Regards,
D

[Ozark Lady]

It can depend on where you garden.
Here it usually gets so hot that plants are heat killed in August.
When you allow the plants to sprawl, they make a micro climate and hold the moisture. And the shade helps them too. If in a cage, they are exposed to airflow, more sun, and lose the moisture, faster than I can replenish it.

Where you are not dealing with our heat, and the drying Texas winds blowing through, you may find that the very micro climate that is beneficial for my tomatoes is deadly for yours.

All you can do is observe, take photos and keep records to see what works best in your individual micro climate.

For instance my elevation of 1500 feet is not like someone up really high, nor someone at sealevel, it will change alot of gardening practices, that just don't work equally for all.

[applestar]

If tomatoes are like fruit trees, the less upright (I.e. closer to parallel to the ground) a branch is, the more flowers and fruits it would produce. That's why espaliered fruit trees bear a lot even though so much of their branches are cut off. So maybe unsupported tomatoes are more productive, but the disease issues can cause more problems and fruit loss?

[Ozark Lady]

That is true too, and my plum tree definitely bears that out, the upright limbs have few fruit, but the horizontal ones are absolutely loaded.

I pruned the horizontal ones, so you know I was bound to remove some fruiting buds, but I couldn't reach the high vertical, so they just naturally had less fruit buds.

I think that I only have 4 that are not in containers and not caged, so I will watch them and compare notes too. I just hope the caged ones survive this summer heat.

Caging does make my tomatoes less accessible to the chickens pecking them, though. Hey but sprawled, the chickens can get the bugs... hmmm?

[Dixana]

I DO know these three plants are now taking up a HUGE chunk of space in the garden that they wouldn't be had they been caged...
Perhaps next year I'll run a side by side comparison caged vs. uncaged and see what happens seeing as despite huge fruit production, they take up at least three times the space they would otherwise.
I also know we have been having obsurdly humid weather here which we all know is not a good thing for the maters It's so humid the outsides of my doors and windows are covered in condensation from the inside AC and I can hardly breathe when outside. I love heat but I DESPISE humidity. The skeeters on the other hand seem to love it
My training runs consist of sweating to death in the sun or being eaten alive by mosquitos BLEH

[GardenJester]

It doesn't matter, my caged yellow pears have over grown their cages like 2 weeks ago, now they are invading the eggplants airspace in the next row.

[Ozark Lady]

I built my own cages, and I should have made them twice the height, I will tomatoes going up and over and still running along the ground...
They are in full bloom, beginning setting tiny fruit, so all is well, but these plants are in monster mode. Maybe they know food will be scarce this fall?

Hey, how do wild animals know to grow more fur? Maybe plants know we are going to need extra food.

Now when my tomatoes sprawl, they aren't really in the way, they are in the paths between beds, and laying on grass. But I don't normally have the paths full of containers of tomatoes either. I got carried away a bit this year! I may have to just pick a side to walk on, and let plants have the other side of the paths.