Maggie, I am using wooden stakes this year, and will use whatever I have on hand to tie the plants up as they grow. In other years we've used cages and we've let them all sprawl, but I want good air circulation and I hate having to damage plants and fruit pushing my way between plants when we harvest, so it's stakes this year. I'm planting my salad crops under and between the tomatoes for the most part.

I also prefer to pinch out the suckers as Bobert and Janie describe. They are little stems, by the way. Lots of sucker pictures for you!

Janie- Yes, those first sweet roses made the whole difficult day worthwhile.

maeve