Re: [CH] supporting chile plants
love2troll@kc.rr.com
Sun, 29 Jun 2008 12:36:43 -0500
I rather like field fencing for support cages or t-posts and clothesline wire for rows of plants. For tomatoes, cukes etc in ground just cut the bottom horizontal wire off and push the 4" prongs into the earth. Cages are quite well anchored as is, or can pound in a t-post or two for more support. Bags made from nylon tule isolate blossoms for pure seed saving. For my deck containers or ones I want to move around I use the method shown first. The majority I just poke into the ground.
Field fencing is cheap & sturdy: http://www.fototime.com/inv/8A1BACD2C940CA6
jt
---- margaret lauterbach <melauter@earthlink.net> wrote:
> 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.
>