[CH] supporting chile plants
margaret lauterbach (melauter@earthlink.net)
Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:47:26 -0600
Alex, I use those cheap 3-ring otherwise useless tomato "supports"
over all of my chile and eggplant plants. Thus I don't worry about
my dogs' roaming through the garden watching for mice and
voles. Chile plants are brittle, and only once has one of my dogs
damaged chile plants in the garden. Then, in hot pursuit, my strong
wire fox terrier snapped a heavily-fruited chocolate hab off at soil
line, knocking over the cage as he went. I picked off all of the
fruit and sent them to Don, since they were hotter than I can
tolerate. Those three-ring cages should be very cheap at end of
season, or perhaps even now. Margaret L
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:33:45 +0000
From: Alex Silbajoris <asilbajo@hotmail.com>
Subject: [CH] Trying peony hoops this year
Pods,
Over several years some of my plants, usually big bells and such,
tend to fall over in stormy weather when they are heavy with
fruit. I have tried staking them, which _sometimes_ works. This
year I'm trying peony hoops for support.
We have 30+ peonies here in the gardens, and as you know when they
bloom and the rain falls, the flowers go face-flat on the ground and
that's it for your blooming for the year. So we have metal hoops
about 14" wide on four legs. We put them over the plants and let
them grow through, and once the plants grow in the hoops are
invisible but the blooms stay up in the rain.
Well the peonies are all done blooming and they've been deadheaded so
they don't need the hoops. So I've been putting hoops over my bells,
salsa peppers, marconi, jalapeno, etc. Right now the hoops are
bigger than the plants and it kind of looks like I'm trying to shield
them from government control signals. Or maybe an elaborate Faraday
cage to distribute any lightning hits.
And they are in fact calling for lightning, this has been a stormy
start to the summer. Today's newspaper has a front-page pic of
interstate 70 under water a few miles east of town.