Also does anyone have experience with the FW and peppers. Because I have five rows of peppers that are about to get out of hand if I for do something to stake them up.

Collegekid, I started out with the Florida Weave some years ago, but have changed my system a little with age.

I use T post for all my trellises. I use a short piece of 1/2 PVC and a 30" 1/2" rebar to get the height up as high as I can teach. ( you can make the rebar as long as you want it to make taller post). I use the same system on all my plants that need support. I will show you a picture of a trellis my granddaughter made a couple of weeks ago. When she called me out to see what she had done, she had a beautiful weave around my Bamboo, but left the tomato plants out. We were able to fix that very easily. My peppers are supported the same was and I no longer take my system down each year. I just till along the trellis and plant what ever I want. I also use the trellis as a hand rail when I am in the garden.

All of this started out as a "Florida Weave", but changed as I became more unstable on my feet.

Larry

P.S. You have some very pretty plants and I an sure they will be very productive.

Collegekid, I thought I would throw this picture in also to encourage you to go as high as you can with the post extension. As you can see it is June 26 and I am already out of room at the top of my post on my first planting of tomatoes. If you tie the PVC on as shown on the post, a post driver will still slip down over it.

Larry

I'm using the FW method on some toms this year too. You can top your plants, but personally I am allowing mine to just grow out the top and cascade back down, only trimming branches that break. I chose not to prune suckers this year either so we shall see. I was concerned the weight of the indeterminate plants would be too much for this trellis method but so far most of my plants are 6-7' tall and holding up just fine. They are just now reaching beyond the top of the posts. I feel like topping a plant can reduce it productivity, from what I've read it seems the time topping is recommended if at all is at the Very end of the season when you really need the plant to focus all its energy into ripening the fruit before the first frost. If your plants are healthy I don't see a reason to pull and replant either but maybe someone with more experience can respond to that. I'm pulling & replanting about half of my toms for fall due to extreme spider mite damage (extreme as in there are Maybe 3-5 partially green branches on 4-7' plants lol) On those I'm just waiting on the large fruit to ripen then into a trash bag they go!
As for the peppers, I don't see why the FW wouldn't work for them too! Its worth a shot, keep us posted on what you decide!
Alexis

Larry! I love that you always post pictures! They are so helpful (and I adapted your advice to extend one of my T-post trellises by ziptie-ing 8ft 1"x2"s to all my T-posts and using jute for crossbars) just a short term solution for some pole beans, but I got the idea from you so Thanks!

Amunk01, you are welcome. The reason I take so many pictures is that I would loose my notes, and my memory sucks. Just one of the prices you pay for getting old.

Larry

i have thought about letting them cascade over but was worried about the paths just turning into a jungle as well as limiting air circulation at the lower ends of the plant. i came from colorado so i am still in the mindset of a shorter grow season and used to top my tomatoes for that very reason but here you can harvest tomatoes well into october so it seems pretty crazy to start topping them now.

Alexis, The reason many people pull and replace tomato plants here in the summer with fresh plants for the fall is because the mid-summer through late-summer heat is hard on plants that already are stressed from carrying a heavy load of fruit in our typical summer conditions. Plants that look wonderful in mid-June can look like crap by late July, and sometimes they can look like crap by late June if disease strikes. Since pests (like spider mites, for example) tend to flock to stressed plants, fresh new plants often are not as attractive to pests either. It is a personal choice though. Lots of people cut back their summer plants by 40-50-60% and hope to get fresh new regrowth that will produce a nice harvest for fall. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Many variables are involved. It works best if the plants have remained relatively pest-free and disease-free, and it works best in years that are not drought years, since summer drought just adds to the plants' stress.

I vary what I do in any given year, depending on how the plants look, what the weather is like, and how tired I am of picking tomatoes. There's always a certain point in mid-summer where I'm so tired of canning, dehydrating and freezing tomatoes that I contemplate pulling every single plant just so I can stop dealing with the harvest. I never really yank out all of them, but sometimes in a drought year, I just close the gate and walk away and pretty much abandon them. Amazingly, some of them will survive, even if they are sickly, spider mite-infested and starved for water. Then, when the weather cools down, they make a lot of new growth and set fruit, and then the race is on to keep the plants from freezing long enough for that fall tomato fruit to ripen. Since moving here, we've had our first freeze as early as Sept. 30th and as late as either December 16th, 17th or 18th, so the fall tomato season can come to a very abrupt halt if there's an early freeze and the plants are not covered up to protect them, or it can seemingly drag on forever and forever and forever.

collegekid, I don't think I've ever topped a plant in my life. I let them climb to the top of their cages and then cascade back down to the ground. With one variety (Tess' Land Race Currant), the plants grew up out of their 8' tall cage, then cascaded back down to the ground. Once the cascading branches reached the ground, I cut them off a couple of inches above ground so they wouldn't be in constant contact with the ground and more vulnerable to disease from soil splash.

Dawn

Thanks everyone for the replies. I have decided to let them cascade down and not top them unless the paths become unruly. As for the peppers. With all this wind I decided to stake them up as well. Not as many but just as support against the wind. I also got 60 more free pepper plants that were a variety of bell types. So I filled in some of the rows where I lost plants and then planted a 6th row of peppers. They were a little on the unhappy side but they should bounce back.
Kyle