A Good Support System is a Must for Growing a Healthy Garden
Posted on May 29, 2009 under In The Garden |
Many flowers and vegetables need something to grow up on. The great thing about supports is that they don’t have to be expensive. Mike and I use just plain bamboo stakes. I bought them from one of the gardening magazines. We are in the second year of using them and they are as good as they ever were…they don’t rot, just get more weathered and natural looking.
This year with all the extra limbs from the ice storm I have talked to several people that have built their own Trellis or supports from the twigs and limbs.
Giving plants a little extra prop helps the plants in many ways….such as better air circulation, which prevents diseases and fruit rot, easier pruning and harvesting.
Plants grown vertically tend to dry out faster, so they may require more frequent watering.
Mike is growing our tomatoes on twine hanging from a cross piece of bamboo. The picture above is our tomato plants.It is working great. You must keep all the little suckers pinched off. The way you tell a sucker from a blooming stem is the blooming stem has no leaves. As summer progresses we will post more pictures of how they are growing.
I have to share with you a funny story about our garden……Mike and I always plant Blue Lake pole beans. The designing of the garden is left up to Mike and I usually do the planting. Mike made a wonderful tee-pee made out of bamboo poles and twine for the pole beans to run up on. After work yesterday I went out to check the garden and looked at the bean plants and thinking “my they are looking good and healthy, but wonder why they are not running up the twine..they seem to be setting blooms….”well the thought occurred to me that maybe they were not the pole beans I thought. I pull the seed package of green beans and guess what…the plants are bush beans!!! After Mike got home from work I shared my discovery with him….we had a great laugh and Mike went outside and took down the tee-pee for the beans..I went out and planted more seeds between the bush beans that have come up. We now have a round circle that the bush beans will in instead of a straight line like most people would plant…
