The Genius Way To Trellis Your Tomato Plants Just Uses String

Tomatoes are a staple in most home gardens because they're relatively easy to grow and maintain. They're a low-maintenance fruit that comes in many varieties, allowing you to grow different flavors. Whether you go with beefsteak, cherry, or heirloom, you'll likely get a continual harvest without too much effort. As long as they get six hours of full sun daily, are watered weekly, and have slightly acidic soil supplemented with fertilizer, they shouldn't give you too much trouble. However, there is one intervening procedure you need to do when they're just beginning to grow: You need to trellis your tomatoes, and you can do so with a simple string.

Without intervention, tomatoes will sprawl across the ground rather than grow upright. While this might not seem so bad at first glance — after all, melons, cucumbers, and squash sprawl — this can be an issue for more vulnerable tomatoes since they can become more prone to disease. While some folks will use chicken wire, mesh cages, or wooden stakes to keep their plants upright, you can also just use a piece of string. Here's how.

If you're looking for ways to support your tomato plants, then look no further than pieces of string. For this gardening hack to work, your tomato patch needs to be planted underneath arches or a supporting structure. The one in the TikTok tutorial was made with simple PVC pipes you can pick up from a local hardware store, and they were planted in the ground to create small arches around the plants. 

Once the structure is set up, take a 6-foot-long piece of string and tie one end around your tomato plant's stem. You don't want to tie it too tightly, considering the stem will grow thicker as the plant matures. Then, tie the other end of the string to the arch directly above the plant. You want the line to be relatively snug, holding the plant upright as it grows. And that's it! That should be enough to keep your plant standing tall rather than slumping forward all season long.