Welcome to Gaia! ::

For the grass I use the little hand-held rake. On Gaia it's called a cultivator, I guess that's what it's called in real life too.

For tomatoes, mine are doing fine on stakes. I'm no expert by any means though because this is my first year. With the stakes I have to Velcro the branches up or they become too heavy and break. I think the cages prevent that from happening because they're surrounded by the cage. Stakes and ties might be a bit more work. As far as I know you have to support them with something or all your branches will break off before the tomatoes mature.

You should also remove suckers from the crotches of the branches if you're not using cages. There's a good explanation and diagram here.

Oooh! That site's going to help me! My plants been doing ok, I've been touching and lightly pinching the flowers and leaves, but there's always more I'd like to do for them: )

Yep. I just dig in a little bit with the hand held rake and pull grass out at the roots.