Ha, nice. This was actually well written, fairly accurate on the details, and pretty entertaining.

Apparently, according to the article, I'm "The Perfectionist". I've pretty much tried all of those methods of support except for the "trellised screen" approach. Staking for me, simply won't work - not enough time, sprawling only serves to feed the army of slugs the make nightly trips to my tomato garden, the cone shaped cages from the big box stores... Let's not even go there. The only two that I didn't mind were Florida-weave and cages, and cages were slightly less work intensive than Florida-weave. For the size of my garden, cages work, if I grew 50 plants instead of 25, I'd probably have to do Florida-weave.

"The Perfectionist" but leaning toward "The Farmer" since I have the real estate and grow many tomato plants in a row, in cages, spaced at least two feet apart. LOL

Hmmm. "The cage is about 2 steps above just letting the thing sprawl." I don't think so. :) I'm the Perfectionist I guess since I have some 80 plants caged and staked in the gardens just like they show. Not sure which label to apply to all my Earthbox plants - probably The Architect would be the closest.

I was happy to see that the got The Faddist (Topsy-Turvey grower) and The Innocent (3 ring junk cage grower) pictured quite correctly.

Dave

Avery happy one because this is my time of year. I have 75 staked(1 to 3 stem) plants that are pretty well loaded. I also grow nine other vegetables in a side yd garden. I have tomatoes, peppers and eggplants on my driveway.

Yay! I made Farmer. Pretty funny stuff.

"Hmmm. "The cage is about 2 steps above just letting the thing sprawl." I don't think so. :)"

Yeah, I saw that too, I think I ignored it because it wasn't backed up with anything and overall the descriptions were fairly spot-on otherwise.

It's a step up in effort over letting them sprawl, since you do need to put the cages in to begin with and, occasionally, you'll need to pull the plants back inside the cages, but honestly, that's hardly "work." It's mostly just walking through the garden looking the plants over, which I'd want to do anyways... There's a hidden benefit too, no matter how much I wash my hands after handling the plants, I smell like tomatoes for the next few hours, lol. My dad always used to talk about the scent of tomato plants, he wished he could "bottle it" and would joke about making cologne from it, lol.

Yes! I love the scent of tomato plants and wish someone would make a tomato air freshener!

I have fell down on my job... :( I have been so busy with picking green beans and canning them that I neglected my tomatoes! They have escaped their cages and are too big to stuff back in! I guess I will be tying them to the outside of the cages when the shade gets there later today.

They are growing so fast, perfect weather this year.

I guess I'm a farmer in the back yard and a hippie in the front yard. What else can you do with boxwoods and dogwoods besides letting a few sweet 100's roam all season long?

I started off as a "farmer" (string method on 15 plants) but fell behind in maintenance. Now I am somewhere between a "farmer" and "hippie".

Suckers have grown out everywhere, branches are falling over and sprawling on the ground. All this happened in one week of neglect... how do they grow so fast?

In the fall I hope to try a mix between the "perfectionist" and "architech". I want to see which is easier... building cages from concrete reinforcing or building cage/lattice from bamboo. I'll try not to be a "hippie" again... it's such a mess.

I have bought tomato cologne. I think it was this one.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato cologne

I started out with great intentions, too, but have turned into the Hippie. The tomatoes in raised beds in my backyard are loving our hot weather and growing faster than I've ever seen. The tomatoes in the front yard (plopped in clay soil a few weeks later) are still pretty small, I'm interested to see how they make out. They are extras to share with neighbors, anyway, so it's not a big deal if they don't produce :)

Thanks for posting the article!

Price: $19.10, I think I'll pass nanelle! It is also for women. I guess it's for women looking for a farmer! ;)