crowd control

I was google chatting about gardens with evil ducky the other day and mentioned that I needed to get some big tomato cages for my tomatoes. She told me that she's trying the Florida weave method with hers and sent me this helpful tutorial:



I thought it looked like a great option for my long raised bed with the single row of tomatoes down the center, so I set it up today. I used 5-foot T stakes and 1/4" sisal twine from Rural King.




I bought two 50' balls of twine and used one entire ball. I'll probably only have room for two more lines of twine, so one more 50' ball should do it. I have my brandywine and black cherry plants in the back bed set up with the triangular cages I bought back in 2009. I liked them then, but am finding they haven't held up very well. They're hard to set up and keep hooked together, and I'm not convinced they'll bear weight well when the plants get huge. Time will tell, I guess, just like with the Florida weave. If any of my four volunteer tomato plants survive, I'll have test plots for three kinds of containment options, as my dad gave me seven big traditional round cages he had stored in the garage from my parents' gardening days, many years ago.

While I was working on plant containment, I also assembled a string trellis for my blackberry plant. I'm not sure it's going to hold up well over time, but if not I can replace it with a traditional ladder trellis next year.


I also set up the cucumber gates, though it was probably a little early to do so:



Some photos to show off how much the plants have grown - I probably should thin out that overcrowded zucchini bed, but I can't bring myself to dig out a healthy plant.





I'll keep you posted on how the Florida weave works out. Oh! And we have our first green tomatoes, on the grape tomato plant. Hooray!