MagicTies - Why Stake?


	This question leads to arguments among gardeners. Here are the pros and cons of staking. First let's call staking a practice that grows tomatoes off the ground. This could include stakes, cages, trellises, and countless other systems that innovative gardeners have developed. The advantage to growing tomatoes upright include better disease control, easier harvest and space saving.
		Better Disease Control - There are many tomato diseases that are found in the soil. When there is rain, splashing of the drops on the ground will transport disease organisms onto the foliage and fruit, causing problems. By growing plants upright, there is less potential for disease infection from splashing. A mulch will also help reduce this danger.
		Easier Harvest - When plants sprawl on the ground, many fruit become hidden under all that foliage. Finding fruit requires you to move the branches (possibly breaking them off), usually on your hands and knees. By growing tomatoes off the ground, harvesting is simplified and the fruit are easy to find. On the ground, though yields may be higher, who knows how many fruit you don't even see or are eaten by mice, rats or other rodents that can make a perfect home in your ground cultured plants.
		Space Saving - Tomatoes will naturally sprawl and take up quite a bit of room in the garden. If you grow them on stakes, you can probably double or triple the number of plants that can fit in the same space.
		Staking also serves several other functions. It keeps most bugs away, reduces sun-scald, and allows you to work in your garden without stepping on the fruit. Staking allows you easier access to mulch your plants - which in turn controls weeds, warms the soil and controls loss of moisture. It exposes more of the plants leaves to sunlight which results in more food and energy production due to increased photosynthesis.

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