topsy turvy revisited

When I was young I grew up in a rural area of New York. A farming area. Apples. McIntosh apples. Lots and lots of apple trees. The soil was very rich and the trees always had lots and lots of apples on them. So many apples that the limbs became hung heavy with their plentiful bounty of apples. The limbs were so heavy with apples that they would sag and would have broken under the weight of all those aqpples if they had not been propped up with long poles. The apples were nice and red and if I rubbed them on my shirt they would become shiny. On a hot summer day when I would be out walking and get thirsty, it was nice to walk into an apple orchard and pick a nice big McIntosh apple off of a tree and bite into it. The juice from the apple would take care of my thirst. Of course whenever I got thirsty when I was out walking my preference was a bubbly stream with clear cool water in it. Just lay down on the ground next to the stream, put my face into the spring fed water and drink my fill. Now in our modern polluted world, drinking from a stream would probably not be a good thing to do. But I am getting away from what I really wanted to talk about which is the propping up of the limbs of the apple trees so that they wouldn’t break from the weight of the apples. I think that I am having a similar phenomenon with my topsy turvy tomatoes. The amount of fruit is quite bountiful and large but the weight of the tomatoes seems to be causing the vine to split in various places.

The plant seems to be getting by but I worry as to how much damage the vine can suffer and still survive.

Mary put the end of the vine onto the table so as to decrease the hanging weight of the vine.

Has anyone had a similar experience with the topsy turvy tomato plant system? We have already eaten some of the tomatoes that have ripened and they are good. In fact we had some on our sandwiches for lunch. Gotta go. Lew