This year I’m growing the tomatoes in mineral tubs and I kept thinking of a good way to stake them keep them safe. Chad has a friend who grows his garden in mineral tubs and he uses cattle panels to stake his tomatoes. He puts a post in the ground every 8 or 10′, however long the panels are, then he lines up the tubs, puts the whole long panel across as many tubs as it reaches, attached the ends to the post he’s set in the ground. I was trying to come up with a way to use the cattle panels but there’s too much rock here to dig that many holes for the posts. Vince thought about wrapping some kind of wire around the tubs and I could tie the tomatoes up to the wire and that gave me the idea to cut two pieces of welded wire for each tub, but have them where there’s about a 6 – 8″ gap in two places, tie them together and that way I could reach in to get tomatoes, pull weeds, grab bugs . . whatever I need to do.
The tubs of tomatoes are all lined up, looking pretty and hopefully working on producing lots of tomatoes.
That idea was a great idea . . at least at this point I think it is. I tied the two sections of wire together with fabric so at the end of the season, we can cut the fabric and stack the wire pieces together in the greenhouse or in the shop, grab them against for next year and hopefully use them as long as I’m growing tomatoes in the mineral tubs.
The eggplants don’t really need to be staked but since there are so many of them in a tub (they came all planted together in a pot from Home Depot), I figured if they’re all loaded with eggplants, hopefully, and there’s a big wind, they may all topple over so I put the wire around them. Since we have half a roll of wire left, I asked Vince to cut six more pieces so I can put it around the three tubs of peppers.
After working in the garden for about four hours, I now need to muster up some energy to go cook dinner.
What are your thoughts?