Taming my Tomatoes with a Florida Weave

I keep searching for just the right way to tame my tomatoes. I’ve tried different trellising methods, but they just seem to grow crazy and become totally unwieldy by late summer. That’s also why they are banished out of view to the side garden. Of course it would help if I pruned them like I should, but I am the casual gardener and things happen.

In my experience, my least favorite way of containing tomatoes is the metal cone cages. I’ve never found one tall enough or wide enough to hold up a mature plant in the garden. Maybe they’d work for a small patio tomato, but not for a garden tomato.

My current favorite for supporting tomatoes is the Blue Ribbon ® Ultomato Tomato Plant Cage.

It’s 5′ tall, made of heavy-duty Sturdy Stakes (strong steel core stakes with a tough, thick plastic coating) and has nine fully-adjustable support clips. I’ve had mine for years. The extra nice thing is that if I’m a little late staking the tomatoes, it’s super easy to get the plant contained without damaging anything.

I found them on clearance one year at Home Depot, but I’ve seen them at Amazon and other garden shops as well.

Last year, I came across a post on Garden Betty describing a different way of trellising tomatoes using a Florida Weave. Despite the somewhat comical name, it sounded like a handy, low cost, easy way to prevent the crazy sprawl I usually experience. I was generally happy with how it turned out in my garden, but I definitely made some mistakes that I would need to fix next time.

I was planning on planting 2 cherry tomato plants, 2 plum tomatoes and 2 beefsteak types in a 16×3 ft raised bed (Problem #1-trying to weave more than one variety of plant in the same row). First, I attached some strong 5′ PVC poles I had around the house to the wood sides of my raised bed to act as anchors.

(Problem #2–not enough stakes)

I took garden twine, and following the weaving method that Garden Betty described, wove the first row of twine. By the time I did the second and third rows, I realized hadn’t followed the directions she provided very well and my supports were way to far apart. I was trying to weave across too far of a distance and everything just started to get tangled. The twine also sagged a lot in the middle and didn’t support the growing plant very well.

To shorten some of the distance between supports, I first ended up using the metal cucumber trellises as an in-between anchor.

Then, by mid-summer as the plants grew bigger, I added a couple more not very strong stakes in a last ditch effort to salvage the weave and keep the plants from completely tipping over.

(Problem #3-really not enough stakes)
(Problem #4-really should keep up with the weeding better, but that’s unrelated to the Florida weave )

So what was my overall impression? For the beefsteak and Roma tomatoes I really liked the Florida Weave technique, even if I had issues with how my first time version turned out. I’m going to use it again for them, but before I get the plants planted I’ll have enough strong stakes in place to offer appropriate support. I also noticed that weaving like varieties would probably work better. They grow at the same speed and in similar shapes. Trying to corral a variety of plants didn’t work so well.

But even with the problems I had, the plants grew great. I thought there was more air circulation making for healthier plants, more naturally placed and stronger supports for sprawling branches and it was easier to get into the plant to harvest the tomatoes. As a bonus, in the fall it was really easy to pull out all the plants. Just cut the twine and down everything comes.

For the cherry tomatoes, I am going to go back to using my Blue Ribbon ® Ultomato Tomato Plant Cage. About midway through the summer, I actually got the cages back out and put them around the cherry tomato plants as extra support. It also helped to take some of the weight off the weave since things were beginning to topple.

I’m looking forward to trying again this summer and having it work out better. At least I learn from my mistakes, usually. What’s your favorite way to support tomatoes?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2015! As many of you have noticed, I had to take a little break this fall. Sometimes, life just gets busy and something needs to give. I’ve been taking lots of pictures and notes, so I’m looking forward to catching up over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here’s a look back at some of my most popular posts of 2014!

1. Painting Garden Rock Garden Markers: A fun project to jazz up the garden.

2. Girls Weekend in Asheville: A wonderful weekend away in a great city!

3. Angel Wings in the Snow: Fascinating tracks in the snow.

4. Creeping Thyme Problems: Trying to salvage a mess in the garden.

5. Peggy’s Snowflakes: Every snowflake is truly different.

6. Gardening: All in the Family: From grandparents to great-granchildren, gardening is a family tradition.

7. Homemade Suet Cakes: Giving homemade suet a try. The birds loved it!

8. Visiting the Glass Pumpkin Patch 2014: I love seeing all the different creations the artists bring every year.

9. Yarn Wrapped Bottles: A fun and easy craft project to decorate for the holidays, a party, a wedding, or for whatever you have that needs some color.

10. My New Raised Bed: Construction: I needed more garden space so we built two new raised bed gardens.

My New Raised Beds-Soil

As I wrote in yesterday’s post (My New Raised Beds-Construction), our new raised beds were finished. Next up, filling them with the right mix of soil and compost. First though, we had to get the grass out and the existing soil turned over. I know our grass has quite a bit of thatch, so it would be a pretty thick barrier to the vegetable roots. After breaking it up pretty well, we covered it with newspaper to kill off whatever grass was still alive. No need to remove the paper before filling with dirt, it will just decompose.

The one downside of turning over the sod is the possibility of wire worms. Wire worms are the larvae of click beetles and they live in the soil near the roots of grass. Once disturbed by the digging, they make their way up to the new crops and wreak their havoc. I’m going to assume this is not going to happen…

For my current raised bed, I used a mixture of top soil, mushroom compost and potting soil in a 6:3:1 ratio. I had great success with that, so I’ll use the same mixture in the new beds. I calculated that I needed 32 cf total for both beds. As I was buying the bags of dirt and compost, that seemed like a lot, so I cut that back. I still ended up with a couple of bags too many. As the dirt settles, I’ll need to add some, so I just put it away until I need it. I ended up buying 15 cf of topsoil (actually Home Depot had the Miracle Gro Garden Soil on sale so I bought mostly that), 8 cf of mushroom compost and 3 cf of potting mix.

I cajoled my teen-aged sons into being part of the garden project, and they dumped all that soil and compost into the beds for me. My back sincerely thanks them (My husband was at work, so not around to help either. He did help with the construction part, making this a true family project). I alternated what was put in and spread it around as they were dumping it in. This makes for a really healthy, light soil mixture that will be perfect for vegetables.

All finished and ready to plant. I’ve never had so much vegetable garden space, so I’m really excited to have the space to spread out the plants like they should be, as well as try some new things.

I’m optimistic that freezing temperatures are behind us, and planted the second round of lettuce, beets, swiss chard, spinach, radish. I also started some sunflowers and bush beans.

I just checked the other seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago, and they are just starting to sprout. We’ve had some pretty cold temperatures so it took a little longer than I would have thought.

Did you build any new gardens or see any seedling yet?

My New Raised Beds-Construction

It took a couple of weeks because of the weather and finding the time, but the new raised vegetable beds are finally finished! We had scoped out a site last fall that got a reasonable amount of sun and wouldn’t interfere too much with existing beds, drainage, play space for the kids, etc. Getting full sun on my yard is a bit tricky, but most of the beds will be in full sun mid-summer, and the parts that aren’t, I’ll plant accordingly. After measuring it out, we decided two 4’x6’x8″ beds were the ideal size for the space. Anything more than 4′ wide is too difficult to garden in physically.

I bought corner brackets from Plow and Hearth to simplify the construction of the beds.

Then we went to Home Depot to get lumber. We had planned to use cedar, but they only came in 6″ heights. That just seems too short and doubling was too high and expensive. We researched our options and finally decided on regular pine. While they are not pressure treated, we used them on the other beds and after 3-4 years, they are weathered, but fine. The possibility of eventual rot outweighed the potential toxins in pressure treated wood. To make the job a bit easier, we had Home Depot cut the boards for us for free.

Now the construction began. All the hardware was included in the corner kit, we just had to supply the drill for drilling pilot holes and screwing in all the screw.

One was done!

Only took a couple of hours to build both, and they couldn’t be easier. We lined them up, leveled them and then pushed them into the ground.

Tomorrow–filling the beds.

Garden Season has Officially Begun!

After quite the long winter, I finally have been able to get out in the garden and get started for the season. Woohoo!! Because it’s a little later than usual, we skipped over the garden clean-up temporarily and worked on preparing the vegetable garden, building 2 new raised beds and seed-starting. Normally, with the last frost date being the end of April, I would have liked to get all this started a couple of weeks ago. But, with the weather as awful as it was, and spring break thrown in, this weekend was better than never.

First off, I prepared the current vegetable bed by adding compost to refresh things a bit. I always seem to have trouble finding it early in the spring (and haven’t started making my own yet), so I bought it last fall and left the bags there for spring. Nice to not have to go searching for it this weekend!

Once I got the compost worked into the soil, the garden was ready to add the cold weather seeds. Hopefully, it’s not too late. Looking at the long range forecast, I think I’m fine.

Today I planted rows of:
Beets (Gourmet Blend Organic)
Carrots (Danvers Organic)
Cabbage (Copenhagen)
Lettuce (Tom Thumb Butterhead)
Lettuce (Red Sails Leafy Organic)
Radish (Cherry Belle Organic)
Spinach (Bloomingdale Organic)
Swiss Chard (Bright Lights)

These seeds were all from Botanical Interests. In another week-10 days, I’ll plant a second row of seeds to try and get 2 harvests before the summer heat hits us.

All seed packets give specific instructions as to how and when to to plant the seeds. Most are planted either 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch deep. The 1/4 inch deep seeds I usually spread according to instructions, then just lightly cover with some dirt sprinkled from my hand. You want just a very light cover of dirt. The seeds planted 1/2 inch deep, I’ll push in about fingertip deep and cover. Then water gently.

Later this week, I’ll share the rest of the weekend’s projects!

I had a nice surprise when I went over to the side of the house to start the vegetable garden. My rhubarb was already up and looks beautiful. Both plants have returned, so now I have a 2 yr old and 3 yr old plant that can both be fully harvested. I think I will have plenty to share, so my friends are going to love me!

Did you get out in your garden this weekend?

Seeds are in the House

After spending quite a bit of time pouring over seed catalogs, I finally sent in my seed orders. I had lots of new seed catalogs come to the house, and some more companies I just visited on-line, making the choices this year really tough.

Ultimately, I went with some Burpee stand by’s and the rest from Botanical Interests. I ordered an assortment of vegetables and flowers. Some of the vegetables I’ve grown before (summer squash, zucchini, lettuce) and others are new to my garden (pattypan squash, beets and cabbage).

I’ve outgrown the raised bed on the side of the house, plus we’ll have new construction next door so I’m not sure what the sun situation for that bed will even be come next year. So we spent a great deal of time watching the sun pattern in the yard last year (full sun is a problem in my yard) and mulling over where we could tolerate more vegetable beds. We finally settled on a new location off the back of the patio for 2 new raised beds. I’ve promised to keep them under control and somehow “pretty” them up. You can imagine them out there under the snow.

I bought new raised bed frames last fall from Plow and Hearth, so I am ready to go after a trip to the lumber store. I’ll let you know how I like the brackets.

Are you ready to start planting?

Tag: raised beds