It doesn’t matter if you’re growing edibles or ornamentals, sooner or later you’re going to have to provide some support for them so they can grow to their best potential. Listen to @joegardenerTV explain some options that can help support your garden plants.
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you know it doesn’t matter whether you’re growing Edibles or ornamentals sooner or later you’re probably going to need to provide some support for them to help them grow so in this video I want to show you some of the most common options to give your plants the support they need between all the Edibles and the ornamental plants that I grow we use a lot of supports so cost is a factor and convenience is also something to consider so something we use a lot of and that are these bamboo steaks now let me tell you about those and first of all let me just clarify I don’t keep this trash can sitting in my rais bed usually it’s off to the side but in a convenient location because we’re always reaching in here to get something to support but I love bamboo first of all because it’s readily available you can find it anywhere or order it online but you can also find it growing probably close to your house within a few blocks no doubt so if you haven’t sourced bamboo that you can get for free find out who the property owner is and then go Harvest a bunch and I use harvested bamboo a lot especially for the taller thicker pieces now this is one that’s been cut down but I like the thickness and the sturdiness of it and bamboo will last for a very long time and I really do like the fact that it comes from sustainable sources it’s inexpensive if you buy it and it’s very handy and again the different shapes and sizes and diameters really come in handy depending on what you’re trying to support so that’s bamboo use it as often as you can like we do all around the garden and in our native plant beds now if you don’t want to use bamboo but you still need something that is tall and rather slim you can buy these at the box store or the garden center and these are basically metal covered by a plastic coating but these are I think 8 ft long or so they’re probably about five or six bucks but these also last a long time and they’re very handy because on one end you’ve got a point so it goes into the ground very easily and then and uh it’s covered at the top with a little bit of protection so this is a handy piece and I have quite a few of these but I still tend to use the bamboo more than anything else so that’s a straight vertical support and a couple options for that now let’s talk about some of the most traditional supports when you’re dealing with plants like your Tomatoes or your peppers or your eggplants and let’s start with the traditional cone cage this is kind of the tomato cage that’s been around forever now they’ve made a few improvements lately and that they come in different colors and they’ve got a plastic coating so I’ll give a plus for that but this is often what we buy as an entrylevel cone the downside to this is this is about as big as it gets and if you’re growing into terminant Tomatoes which are the ones that keep growing because they’re a Vine and they will go way past this this cone really isn’t doing much good now they cost somewhere between $5 to $7 you can find them anywhere they last a few few years but I still find them to be rather flimsy but the biggest downside to me is that if you’re trying to support a tall plant like an indeterminate tomato this is not going to do the trick that said if you’re going to grow dwarf Tomatoes or indeterminate tomatoes or smaller pepper varieties or eggplant varieties or maybe even some squash that you want to train up from the middle and spill out over the side this is great for that so I don’t want to Discount this too much because it really is a handy support depending on what you’re growing so that’s kind of the traditional tomato cage cone now a version of that is this square one right here and similar in height uh it’s a little bit wider a little bit more expensive it has those nice colors but what I like about this is that you can detach it and collapse it so at the end of the season you can just lay this flat so if you’re using a lot of these you’re really going to appreciate the storability of a cage that folds down and collapses like this one plus it’s got some nice colors all right so moving on on this is one that’s very traditional for the folks that are going a lot of those indeterminate tomatoes that’s where you see this most often used the tall plants need a tall support and if you’re growing a lot of tomatoes you’re going to need a lot of cages for that so this is where this comes into play this is concrete reinforcing wire you buy this at the Box store in a giant roll it’s super heavy so once you get it home roll it out on a flat surface and then make the cuts with a bolt cutter wire cutters and this right here is 6 feet in length if you were to roll it out flat and make the cut you’d measure 6 feet and that’s what you would get in size uh and this is what it would look like when it’s rolled up and then bound together now very accessible not that expensive per cone depending on the diameter will determine how many of these you can make out of a single roll but the downside to me is that they rust quickly which is going to cause them to wear f faster and so you can get a few years out of these uh but don’t expect these to last like a really long time the other thing is when it’s time to store these at the end of the season you need to get these out of the garden these are going to be stored all like it is right now rolled up in other words you can’t undo these and lay them out flat because the metal memory is going to keep it wanting to go back together in a cylinder which is okay it’s just if you have a lot of these you’re stacking them up and it can bit be a little bit unwieldy so just something to consider if you want to use these but still a great option and the next best thing for supporting indeterminate tomato plants which leads me to livestock panels now I used to use those round cylinders a lot but something was bother bothering me about how they rusted and they didn’t look that great in the garden but that’s a me thing but I found these livestock panels because here at the Garden Farm we have needs for these livestock panels for the livestock but I started thinking gosh these are sturdy they’re tall maybe I can make a tomato cage out of it so about 10 years ago I got my bolt cutters out and I started cutting up one and it quickly evolved to what I call the ultimate tomato cage and I’m here to tell you that this is the best thing I’ve ever seen or ever used and I really love it and it does a great job of supporting my tomatoes and a lot of other things so let me tell you about the livestock panels you get those at Farm Supply tractor supply stores they used to cost about $20 but now they’re up to about 30 but that’s still okay this is going to make 1 and2 cages when you buy a complete panel that’s okay it sounds expensive but considering how long these are going to last it’s a great investment so if you advertise the cost each season I think I did the math and it comes down to like less than a dollar a season well worth it but besides the fact that it’s a good long-term investment these are not going to rust they are taller than the round columns and one of my favorite features of this style cage is the stackability or the storability I talked about what I didn’t like on the round cages but if you have these cages all you’ve got to do is take the panels and stack them on top of each other just like this and just imagine like in my case I think I probably have 60 cages so that’s 120 panels when you do the math but 120 stacked one on top of the other is a very small footprint so it makes it easy to store and then when it’s time to put it back up it’s just as easy to put it back up because you just take a panel put it in place poke it down depending on your soil that may be easier than other times and then the other piece matches up with it and you could tweak that to really get a perfect match if you wanted to it’s that easy so let’s talk about other options we really increased our growing space in this Garden when we added livestock panels to The Back Fence line of the garden because now we have all this extra vertical space that we did not have before currently we’re using it for a lot of flowers but it comes in handy when we’re trying to secure the sunflowers to something but prior to that I was growing espalier tomatoes up this back so if you’re not familiar with that that’s just training your plants in a flat plane supported by something like the livestock panels but I would line this 75 foot span with grow bags and straw bales with tomatoes growing in them and I had so many more tomatoes that were so happy because against the flat panel they were exposed to lots of sunlight and air and it was a beautiful thing so unlimited options when you have a flat panel for extra support let me show you something else here I’ve got these panels that I’m using to support cucurbits and Vining crops like right now these are my cucumber melons and they’re in a tin pattern so this is two panels that I’ve cut to size for the bed and the plants just take so well to this the tindles are latching on because there’s so many places for them to do that but the sky’s a limit I use this for cucumbers and peas and on and on and same thing at the end of the season I just take these out and I store them behind some trees until I need them again so they’re super versatile and the more that you use these panels the more opportunities you’ll probably find for other things that you can use them for so this is just such a good option but even if you don’t get to the livestock panels keep in mind those bamboo steaks are invaluable they’re inexpensive they’re readily available and you can probably get them for free so make good use of those and I hope these options were helpful to you [Music]
1 Comment
🙂 as soon as possible to grow ,but planting tomato need the land .