Cutting Off Grape Tomatoes/TOVs

When tomatoes are no longer harvested (or would be harvested few times), we cut off the bottom of the stem to kill off the plant.  This makes the plant to wither and thus easier to collect after a day.

Cutting off the stem of a tomato plant.

When the plant is withered, we start collecting them into piles for disposal.  We reach to the top of the string and cut, which will shoot up the string roll off the steel wire on top.  Note that we need to reach higher than the last clip that clings the string and the plant together or else the string roll will not pop off.

Uncut, healthy vines.

Cut, withered vines

Tools involved.  From the left are the scissors, string roll, and gloves.

Piles of cut tomato vines.

We give a quick roll to the strings to make sure they don't get tangled and drop them to the ground.  After piling up all the cut vines, we roll a cart to pick them up, and off to the compost they go.