Our crew staked 3 acres of tomatoes in just 4 hours -- a record for our farm.
Why Staking is Important
As tomato plants grow taller, their weight can cause them to fall over. If the tomatoes touch the ground, they become much more susceptible to diseases. To prevent this, we provide the plants with a trellis to climb. We build this trellis in the field using stakes and tomato twine stretched between them. The tomato plants are then woven between the twine, which helps keep them strong and healthy.
How the Process Works
Usually, around the end of July, we notice the plants starting to lean. That's when we bring out our bin of fiberglass stakes and head to the tomato fields. Each stake is about 4 feet high. The crew lays out the stakes on the ground every 4-5 plants. They then take turns pounding the stakes into the ground by hand using a metal stake pounder. This task provides a very physical upper body workout, with each stake requiring about 4-5 hits from the pounder. We place close to 2000 stakes each year, and because it's so exhausting, we break the work up into two days. We also start early in the morning when the temperatures are cooler, taking plenty of popsicle and water breaks in the shade.
Staking is easily the hardest physical labor on the farm all season long. It doesn’t help that it occurs during the hottest week of the year. Larger farms use machines for this work, but for a small farm like ours, manual labor is still the way to go.
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