ISO attractive front yard Tomato Trellis or Cage solution
Robin Morris
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
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Robin Morris
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoRelated Discussions
Cucumber Beetle Solutions?
Comments (20)Cucumber beetles and squash bugs are two of the worst pests in any garden. As a certified organic grower, the strongest "control" in our arsenal is 1% Rotenone--which will kill most anything except adult squash bugs and cucumber beetles (and ants--I've actually had ants live in 1% Rotenone powder). The best method of control of any pest is a "trap" crop. Sometimes you have to forfeit growing most cucurbits for a season if you're so infected with cucumber beetles or squash bugs that you simply can't continue. Of course a trap crop is a small crop of the type preferred by the insect you're trying to eradicate. Anney mentioned the squash that cuke beetles seem to be most attractive in her area, so she should use that. Do a small planting to attract the beetles to that area--it need only be 4 feet by 4 feet, or 10 feet by 10 feet, whatever suits you. When all the cuke beetles in the world are feeding on the trap crop, do them in with whatever suits you and you feel won't destroy the universe. I use pure ethanol. Do a succession of these small trap crop plantings, and at the end of the season, you'l have made a horrific dent in their population. (Unless your next door neighbor is working against you with his crop of cuke beetles allowed to run amuck.) It hurts to have to sacrifice crops you love to eat while your eradication process is ongoing--but it's sometimes necessary, and I've had to do it in the past. If you research both insects I mentioned, you'll find they overwinter in trash and debris and litter--and of course in all this stuff which is in the woods nearby, which makes it difficult--but garden cleanly and don't have junk lying around to give them instant access--leaves, old bales of hay and straw, old mulch, etc., all the things they love to hide in over winter. Good work Anney, and others, who are trying to solve the problem. I'm an organic market grower, and some years I have to leave a 10' by 10' growth of cantaloupes or watermelons to herd up all the squash bugs and cucumber beetles that were on 5 acres of cataloupes and/or watermelons, then kill the thousands of those insects that congregate on the small planting. That's the beauty of a "trap" crop. I can either spray 5 acres--or I can wait until the planting is over and leave a small trap planting where I can kill them all as they flock to it. It makes a big difference in time, energy, and money spent....See MoreSquirrels - the final solution
Comments (32)Wetfeet - The Squirrel Toss video seems to have been removed. Bummer. Richardol - Oh, you meant the real Mark Trail. Cool. Interesting info - Squirrels that are black are grey squirrels w/ a different gene in play.* I first saw black squirrels in N. MN and thought they were pretty. They probably eat orchids, too. RP, red squirrels in the U.S. aren't endangered, but I just ran across info on Wikipedia about grey squirrels taking over in England, partially because they have no natural predators. That's too bad. "On some occasions, during the fall, large numbers of gray squirrels will search for new places to live. It is thought that this behavior, known as emigration, results when squirrel numbers are high and food is scarce. When mature forests covered most of eastern North America, this mass movement of squirrels was quite spectacular." http://www.dnr.state.md.us/wildlife/greysquirrel.html Can you imagine a "mass movement of squirrels"? It'd be like the Hitchcock movie "The Birds" or the attack of the killer tomatoes. "Hunters have to be quick and accurate to shoot the swift and elusive eastern grey squirrel. It is interesting to note that naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton credited these qualities of marksmanship, developed to a high degree by early American squirrel hunters, with helping to defeat the British during the American revolution." http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=89 Wow. My grandfather, who grew up in rural Arkansas, often shot squirrel, which we ate. Wild turkey, too. I didn't realize what a good shot he must have been. Any of you who can shoot a squirrel - amazing. The fact that squirrels travel through their territory in the same sequence each day suggests loads of possibilities. If you knew the little darling was going to hit your back yard around 5:30 every afternoon... http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Sciurus_carolinensis.html "Are There Squirrels in Heaven?" This and other topics are discussed on another anti-squirrel site: http://www.scarysquirrel.org/page1.html. WC8 *"Eastern grey squirrels Sciurus carolinensis commonly occur in two colour phases, grey and black, which leads people to thinkÂmistakenlyÂthat there are two different species. Black is often the dominant colour in Ontario and Quebec, toward the northern limits of the species range. Farther south the black phase is less common and is not found at all in the southern United States. This may indicate that the gene responsible for black coloration has some cold-weather adaptation associated with it." http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=89...See MoreKeeping the garden watered...what are your favorite solutions?
Comments (33)I didn't think it would be a good idea, like you said, to run it under or over the sidewalk, bad enough to run a hose across it for the soaker hose my neighbor loaned me last year and this. But it's so long, it has 3 turns and having to lift it in and out to hoe (I will mulch when I get to it), is almost more than I can bear. It's heavy and drags across plants to move so last year I never weeded except a few by hand, but with tomatoes in cages, it wasn't too bad. The soaker worked great for tomatoes in neat rows but is not going to work well for tiny plants and roses scattered more randomly. My roses are one long row but the companion plants are scattered. Do you know what I really wish? I wish I had an old-fashioned pump and a cistern to collect all this water. That is not feasible but it would sure bring back memories, and I would love doing it. My grandmother couldn't have watered much of anything except her African violets inside, and things grew ok for her. She didn't mulch either, just probably did a little hoeing and had boards to walk on to get down the rows of what she had planted. She had a long perennial bed with shrubs and spring bulbs but no roses that I can remember. If I get fed up enough this summer and depending on my health, I can have a guy come and install a faucet on the other side of the back sidewalk (front is a 'nuther animal but could have another one in the basement going through another outside wall on the other side of the sidewalk). Then I could irrigate all of it. I will remember Drip Works, usually think long and hard before making such a change especially in light of expensive repairs I need done, can afford some of it but not all at once and hard to prioritize. Irrigation would not be that expensive if I do it myself but takes thinking, planning and time. I really really want my arbor put back up, right this time, heard a jackhammer going at the neighbor's, was hoping they could come here when done and blast out four concrete footings so we can start over. No such luck. Of course I would have paid a reasonable amount. It was a fence company and I saw they had augurs of different sizes in the truck. That would be so nice, that arbor was a dream come true, and it's all come to nothing for now, my son and the neighbor down the street think vandals knocked it over but it wasn't installed right, I knew it, and was frantically trying to find out how I could anchor it better, didn't make it in time, actually paid another guy to try to screw it in the footings using a masonry drill. That failed, too. My son is good at things but so busy. It is thundering and raining again . . .so far just a shower. The beds that aren't mulched yet dried out already after that record downpour, probably damp deeper down. I will mulch but want all my seedlings in and big enough so I can see where to put it all without ruining some plus I want to hoe first. I can neaten up the edges later....See Moretrellis spacing
Comments (17)CC, I am the wrong person to comment on tomato plant spacing because (a) I plant too many and (b) I break the rules and plant them too closely to one another. Your spacing can vary depending on if you're using cages (my preferred method), trellises, staking or the Florida Weave. It is hard to give a generic answer because some varieties become huge monsters, and some stay pretty compact. I will vary the spacing depending on what variety I'm planting, and I base the spacing on what I remember about how large those specific varieties have grown in previous years. With determinates, if they are standard determinates I usually space them 24" apart, though some years I plant them 18" apart. With indeterminates, I shoot for 30-36" apart. If I plant them more closely than that, they don't produce as well and tend to have foliar disease issues due to poor air flow. I treat ISIs as indeterminates, and dwarfs get all sorts of spacing depending on how tall or short the dwarf actually is. Most years, I put tomato plants in their own beds and peppers in their own. I tried planting them together and didn't see any upside at all other than the tomato plants sometimes shading the pepper plants and preventing peppers from sunscalding. I have tried companion planting in many forms and fashions, and have decided that it doesn't really seem to have a big impact. There are some exceptions. I always plant borage with my tomatoes as a companion planting and lots of basil nearby too, and almost never have tormato hornworms on my plants. So, that seems to work for some reason and I keep doing it. The only companion plants I think are worthwhile are the ones that attract beneficial insects to my garden. I interplant veggies, flowers and herbs in the same beds and have done so for probably 20 years. I studied companion planting intensively and tried it for almost two decades, and cannot say that planting two types of veggies close together ever improved their flavor or productivity or plant health, or that it didn't. Stuff like that is hard to measure unless you are running two separate beds, planted identically except one uses companion planting techniques and the other doesn't. If you did that you could conpare the results and draw a conclusion. Cross-pollination of tomatoes can occur, but really doesn't happen very often. Tomatoes have perfect flowers, meaning they pollinate themselves inside the flower without any outside intervention being strictly necessary. Usually they pollinate before the flowers even open up. So, most of the time, your flower is pollinated even before a bee visits it. Can bees carry pollen from one plant to another? Yes, but it isn't as common as people believe. I bet it happens less than 5% of the time. It will happen sometimes with certain tomato varieties that have protruding styles as well as with potato-leaved varieties, and sometimes with fused flowers, which also are called megabooms. And, some of my favorite tomatoes began as a cross-pollinated variety or a mutated variety in someone's garden, so cross-pollination is not necessarily a bad thing. So, put your plants wherever you want and plant them however you want. I honestly think it doesn't make a real difference in companion planting terms. Some people like to really mix things up in the garden, scattering a tomato plant here or there. I like to have all my tomato plants lined up in rows. To me, that is more efficient since they all get the same bed preparation and have similar watering needs. It facilitates a quicker harvest because I move up one row and down the next instead of going from one tomato plant in this raised bed then over to another raised bed where there's two tomato plants, etc. For companion planting I randomly scatter herbs and flowers all over the place in the garden. I want the pollinators to have to fly all over the garden and move from plant to plant to find what they want so that, while doing that, they'll also visit the veggies, flowers and herbs nearby that need them for pollination. Canokie, It is Concrete Reinforcing Wire. You can buy it in big rolls (and it is not particularly cheap) or sometimes in pre-cut sheets. It is not galvanized, so will rust over time, but is incredibly sturdy. I am not sure what gauge the wire is, but my dad used the same CRW tomato cages his entire adult life, and he lived to be 85. Dawn...See More- Robin Morris thanked daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
Robin Morris
5 years agoRobin Morris
5 years ago
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
5 years agoRobin, I am not totally sure that the folding pea trellises will work, even if you add posts for support. Indetermine tomatoes in fruit are heavier than pea plants, and 5’ 4” =64” doesn’t seem tall enough. Even thickly planted peas sometimes push over a similar fence in my garden if I haven’t given it stout enough anchor posts. I don’t have that brand, but suggest that you try one before ordering a bunch for your tomatoes.
Consider rose tuteurs if they are within budget. I have a source near me that sells 6’ tuteurs for $40 (less if on sale), though often they are more expensive elsewhere.
Or perhaps install some nice posts with pretty toppers that will be up year round and then fasten mesh fence panels on during tomato season. Around me I can get rolled fencing, with a choice of powder coated green or galvanized. When you take down the fence panels, wrap the posts in little white lights for winter decor.
Robin Morris thanked NHBabs z4b-5a NH
greenfish1234
5 years agoPruning is definitely a part of it. But the Europeans do these amazing fruit tree fences called espaliers.
Look up tomato espalier and you get a ton of good ideas. Embrace the winter vibes-they are beautiful. My only thought would be, it should be somewhat relicatabke because aren't you supposed to rotate tomatoes?
catticusmockingbird
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoIn my first garden we used rebar cages. They were ugly and hard to store. When we redid the garden in 2009 I wanted something that looked nicer. It's a small garden, but easily seen from many areas of the house.
Now I use a combination of stakes and Texas tomato cages. Love the cages because they collapse for storage. http://tomatocage.com/#xl_xr_page_index
Also use an obelisk for one of the Sun Golds. They vine up to 10 feet. If I were growing in the front yard I'd probably invest in a few more.
Previous garden...
With lights for Christmas...
Robin Morris thanked catticusmockingbirdRobin Morris
5 years ago- PRO
Patricia Colwell Consulting
5 years agoLook at these
the tree ones could have fairy lights inthem in the winter
Robin Morris thanked Patricia Colwell Consulting
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