There are several hundred acres of tomatoes outside my town. Grown commercially for a large national retailer. They are grown in white plastic, drip irrigated, and trained to a single stick. Determinate I think. Only pick them a few times then disk them up. Plant the same bottomland every year. Plants are set in early June for late August harvest. Slicing tomatoes.

No cages used. I am going to visit these farms for a closer look this year.

They pick them green or semi ripe?

I've used the MIGardener single-stem method for the past three years and it has been wonderful. I get sticks (often green from pinched trees) from the woods and use them as 8-10' stakes, then grow up them. I have about 45 tomato plants growing right now that didn't cost me anything for the cage (since I'm not using one) and are in essentially four garden rows 18" apart.

Many videos on his channel but here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qrb1cTzLn8

And with this airflow method I've used only an organic fungicide to mitigate early-blight, plus well water. Hopefully it continues working well.

I know Zim, I read your post, like minds, lol.

I put 5 yards of old manure, a pail of granular fertilizer and a couple gallons of urea nitrogen where it's needed down this year. I advocate not putting up cages or pea/bean fence any higher then one can pick whilst standing there on the ground, lol. I am watering things now and daring it to rain.

I've staked tomatoes, trained to a single stem many times, and let up to 5 flower trusses live.....and have also alowed a two stem plant with 4 flower trusses up here and that is as many as might want to ripen in my area. I went to cages though, many years ago and still prune back alot of suckers. 10 flower trusses on any plant is a lot of tomatoes.

I use 3 sticks in a triangle shape to hold them up. Seems like the plants are strong enough to hold themselves and the fruit up.

Back in the day, my dad cut willow poles and tied up his tomatoes. Made a 4-legged Teepee, tied off at the top per 4 plants, one on each corner.