Just found a weird trick to make my tomato plants grow in circles

I was trying to fix my lopsided mutant tomatoes without staking them, so I wrapped the stems around a wire spiral I made from an old coat hanger. After 3 days the plant started following the curve like it was trained lol. Has anyone else tried bending their veggies into shapes on purpose?

2 comments

2 Comments

wendy_carr24d ago

The cucumbers being curly is actually just the variety and how they grow naturally, not from training the vine itself. @mary_schmidt that spiral staircase trellis sounds amazing though! The trick with tomatoes is that they'll follow a spiral shape, but the fruit itself won't change form since tomatoes grow from flowers that form after the stem sets. I tried bending a young zucchini stem into an S shape once and it worked for a few weeks until the plant got too heavy and snapped right at the bend. Gotta be careful with how tight you make those curves.

mary_schmidt24d ago

My buddy Dan did something similar with his cucumber plants last summer but on a way bigger scale. He built a whole wooden trellis shaped like a spiral staircase and trained the vines around it. By August it looked like a green corkscrew growing out of his raised bed. The weird part was the cucumbers themselves ended up all twisted and curly, like they'd been braided. He couldn't sell them at the farmers market because people thought they were deformed, but his kids thought they were hilarious. I guess the plants just follow whatever path you give them if you're patient enough.