OK, I'll do tomatoes today, because that's what Podster really wanted.
This is not rocket science.
If you can stake a dahlia, a cosmos or any floppy flower; if you can put a name tag anywhere in your garden for anything (you know, even one of those poorly fired pottery stakes saying "Parsley" that your sister-in-law gave you) you can stake tomatoes.
A million ways to do it. Here is how I do it.
You'll need:
A tomato plant
A 1-2 litre (and I'm sorry, but I can't do the US conversion) water or juice bottle, with the cap removed and the bottom cut off.
A tomato stake : I use pieces of bamboo from my own or my neighbour's garden; all our local garden shops sell bamboo tomato stakes; these are about 1" diameter. Other options seen all over here are 1"X1"s; or metal kind of "corkscrew" posts. In any case, since we are dealing with indeterminate tomatoes here, they should be about 6'/2m long.
Get a tomato plant.
Take it to the garden.
Dig a really deep hole (I say that because I raise all my own tomato plants indoors, altho I am going to try a few WS this year for comparison/contrast).
You want that hole to be deep enough that you can bury that poor tomato plant clear up to its ears.
Well, at least up to just below its last set of leaves.
Why?
Well, tomatoes can (and do) grow rootlets all along their stems. More roots, healthier/stronger plants.
Put that plant in the ground so that its top leaves will just stick out nicely aboveground when you fill in the hole.
Put a little bit of dirt in the hole to stabilize the plant.
Just beside it, place the bottle, top down
On the north or east side (or whatever works), stab the tomato stake into the ground.
Fill in the hole.
As the season progresses, the water bottle allows you to water each tomato plant with a watering can or your hose, sending water directly to the roots and not watering the leaves and/or spreading disease.
Also, as the season progresses, you both prune and stake your tomatoes.
First of all, mercilessly and without any kindness whatsoever, cut off any "new shoots: that pop out of the soil beside your real plant. You buried it deep, remember? And, in some cases, this means you'll get "shoots" as well as roots. Kill them!
Watch your lovely plant. Every time it grows a leaf, it has an equal tendency to grow a new stem in the place where the leaf intersects with the Main Stem. (This is different from "fruit stems", where the tomatoes grow and which appear ON THE MAIN STEM in between leaves).
Anyway, PINCH OUT these extra stems! We want all energy to go to fruit, not to vines!
As it grows, tie it to the stake as is necessary to keep it from folding over. I always tie just below each fruit bunch, as a minimum. If you have grown tomatoes before, you'll know what I mean. If not, trust me, you will very quickly learn and, if you don't, you'll stick to flowers!
When it gets to the top of the stake, just let it go (altho I would continue to pinch out the lateral stems).
A bit extensive, but as I understand tomato culture, staking and pruning go together.
I suspect that you can prune tomatoes without staking them, just as one prunes melons and squash; but i would not think that you would stake tomatoes without pruning them.
On the other hand, I would guess that you could let tomatoes run rampant without staking,
In fact, I have never done that.
