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Garden Gate:  Tomato Cages  |
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Clare
True Blue Farmgirl
2173 Posts
NC WA State
USA
2173 Posts |
 Posted - Feb 14 2005 : 08:36:21 AM
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I just found this link to an article about tomato cages that are very sturdy looking and tall, and they fold up! I think I may try to build a few, as my metal tomato cages are totally insufficient. This sounds like a good project for me! See what you think!
http://www.motherearthnews.com/article/2152/toparticles |
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bramble
True Blue Farmgirl
2044 Posts
2044 Posts |
Posted - Feb 14 2005 : 12:05:38 PM
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Clare-- These look very useful but very tall! My plants are usually low and very bushy but heavy with fruit.I have tried the 3 sided flat cages but I do like the containment of the regular cages because of accessibility on all sides especially if I am container growing some tomatoes.
For those of you trying a new type, here's a good recycling project for the old cages. Make topiary forms! Turn upside down so the large round area matches the top of your pot. Anchor the two edges together with wire(I drill a small hole in the pots rim in 4 spots , twist wire to secure the two rims). Twist the prong ends which are now sticking up so they are inside the "cone" and plant the soil filled pot with your favorite climbing ivy, morning glory or clematis. I have two pots on my front porch that look like old topiary and they are only three years old. Not bad for something you see out for trash all the time!I forget what garden program I saw this on, but I went out and planted them that day!
with a happy heart |
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Eileen
True Blue Farmgirl
1199 Posts
Eileen
USA
1199 Posts |
Posted - Feb 14 2005 : 5:48:36 PM
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HI CLARE,
I MADE SOME CAGES VERY MUCH LIKE THIS FROM BAMBOO FOR MY POLE BEANS AND MY SCARLET RUNNER BEANS. We have an abundant and inexpensive source for bamboo here. I also did this to make a sort of cage around my blueberry bushes that I could drape a bird net over to save my berries from the cedar waxwings and stellar jays. It is a great project and simple. Thankyou for the link.
Eileen
songbird; singing joy to the earth |
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free bird
Farmgirl in Training
26 Posts
Laura
Victoria
Texas
USA
26 Posts |
Posted - Feb 15 2005 : 04:56:59 AM
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Those cages sound good. I'll try the link again, for some weird reason I couldn't get on the Mother Earth News link when I tried the first time.
Anyway, here's an idea I've just hatched in my own mind last week, for an enclosed tomato "fence/cage" that will both give the tomatoes support and protect them from my chickens. My chickens are extremely athletic scratchers. The last time I put any kind of tender garden plants in with my chickens there was no trace at all of the plants after a couple weeks, scratched to a pulp and buried in the dirt. So I've been trying to figure out a way to grow my tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant in the now very fertile chicken yard.
First I'm going to get a whole lot of those cheap 5-foot tall wooden stakes that you can find at most of the garden centers and building supply stores (sold in big bundles of twelve). They're very inexpensive, I think about 5.00 or so a bundle. For me I need cheap ones because it will take a lot of them, since I'm going to have at least four long beds of tomato plants and basil plants, each bed about 30 or so feet long and 5 feet wide. Just before I plant the tomatoes, in each bed I'll set in the stakes in a long double row, forming a long narrow fenced-in strip about 2 feet wide, inside which I'll plant the tomatoes and basil. I'll wind heavy jute twine (also really cheap) several times around the area, bottom, middle, and top. The chickens will not be able to get into the tomato fence then. And right after I plant the tomatoes I'll fill the whole bottom of the fenced-in area around the tomatoes with a thick hay mulch. As the plants grow to reach and lean on the fence, then I'll fill it up to the top with hay again, surrounding the tomato stems with hay, all the way up to their newer growth. This will help the tomatoes deal with the hot weather stress we have here in South Texas (as well as protect them from the chickens) and they'll put out extra roots along their buried stems.
This would also make a good structure for to hang temporary shade cloth to protect the ripening tomatoes from the marauding stinkbugs or birds. For the plants that get really tall, I can just add in a few 6 or 7-foot posts as extra support whenever they need it later on. I'll stretch wire across the tops of these, for the tallest tomatoes to ramble over. I won't need to buy this wire, because I save it from all my hay bales (it's what the bales from the feed store are wrapped with).
I think this could be one really inexpensive solution for tomato supports for people like me who have long rows of tomatoes and don't much money to spend on them!
I love my chickens |
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jpbluesky
True Blue Farmgirl
6066 Posts
Jeannie
Florida
USA
6066 Posts |
Posted - Feb 16 2005 : 2:25:36 PM
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Free bird, your hay bale idea sounds very effective. Here in Florida, I also have many pests that love my tomatoes. I use the stakes you suggested by pounding them into the ground all around my gardens, and then I tie lightweight bird screening around the perimeter and also over the top, tieing the screening to the stakes to make a flexible fence. You can hardly see the screening and it can be rolled up and re-used again and again. I tie it to the poles with string, so I can untie easily and that makes it very adaptable to all shapes of gardens. When I pick tomatoes or work in the garden, I just untie the bird screening and fold it back. I have racoons, squirrels, birds and rabbits, and so far none of them have penetrated the screening. By the way, I weight it down at the bottom with bricks every 6 feet or so.
My tomatoes use it as something to climb on, and my snap peas do that too. I find my stakes for free by combing construction sites that throw them away after they are done with them.
jpbluesky
Love those big blue skies and wide open spaces. |
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MeadowLark
True Blue Farmgirl
2206 Posts
USA
2206 Posts |
Posted - Feb 16 2005 : 2:34:30 PM
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Clare, Again thanks for another great link! I was examining the folding idea of the wooden cages and this really intrigues me! Like Bramble explained though, my tomatoes are low and bushy so the wire cages suit me... I built something similar for a spreading antique rose called a "tutouer". It is out of scrap staking material except that the top comes to a point and the legs fan out in a triangle. It seems to do the trick but I have to tie it securly to a fence. The tomato cages could be used for all sorts of vining plants and even vining gords and squash! At the end of growing season I like the idea of folding them up and putting away!
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." Rumi, 13th century. |
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free bird
Farmgirl in Training
26 Posts
Laura
Victoria
Texas
USA
26 Posts |
Posted - Feb 16 2005 : 4:01:28 PM
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jpbluesky, that sounds really good. I bet you get some great-looking tomatoes using that bird netting over your tomato supports. Stinkbugs wreak a lot of havoc on tomatoes over here. Do you have the awful leaf-footed stinkbug in Florida? It's a lot bigger than a regular stinkbug, more longish-shaped like a squash bug, and it has long hind legs with odd leaf-shaped protuberances on the bottom of the legs, and it has a horizontal stripe on its back. Bird netting over cages might be useful against these little monsters. The problem is getting them from below, because they like to also congregate on the dirt below the tomatoes. This is where the thick dense layer of hay in the bottom of the cages would come in handy I guess. (Also I just remembered about something I tried a couple years back--a decoy crop to trap the stinkbugs--But instead of getting really far off subject I'll post it separately here.)
I love my chickens |
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jpbluesky
True Blue Farmgirl
6066 Posts
Jeannie
Florida
USA
6066 Posts |
Posted - Feb 17 2005 : 12:02:15 PM
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Free Bird
We have stinkbugs, and they do stink! But I have never noticed them on the tomatoes. Strange. We have mealy bugs, lots of different little caterpillars and worms, and these strange stick-legged bugs that are bright red that seem to farm a little type of mite. And of course, we have quite a difficult time here with various forms of rot. That does a lot of damage. And we have slugs. But I will look to see if I see stink bugs on the plants. I do plant sunflowers, too. Actally they plant themselves as fallout from the bird feeders!
Thanks for the tips about getting rid of bugs, though! I like the one about shaking them off into water. I have done that with water/poison mix. I just drop the slugs into it after I pick them off the plants. Spring is close!
jpbluesky
Love those big blue skies and wide open spaces. |
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Eileen
True Blue Farmgirl
1199 Posts
Eileen
USA
1199 Posts |
Posted - Feb 17 2005 : 2:00:52 PM
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The water trick works quite well for a lot of different bugs. I have found that if I add just a drop of non toxic soap(not detergent)as a surfactant that the little bugs cannot even swim for a second but get right to the business of drowning. Slugs get very big here and also sucumb to this treatment. I can then dispose of them without hurting the environment.
Eileen
songbird; singing joy to the earth |
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Garden Gate: Tomato Cages |
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Tomato Cages
