Creative Gardening

I guess it's been a while since I posted an update about my garden. Surprisingly it's coming along very well! Already we've enjoyed the bounties of our harvest--plenty of lettuce salads with borage leaves, radishes, and basil tossed in, all courtesy of our garden. We've also enjoyed turnips and beets as well as swiss chard. I went out yesterday to weed a little and as I was readjusting the cucumbers to climb the trellis, I noticed I had several green beans ready to pick! We ate those last night.

I also noticed that my tomato plants are growing so large (remember those tomatoes I was fussing about earlier this spring???) that they're beginning to droop onto the ground. As I don't want to spend money on tomato cages, and because I have a whole pile of dried bamboo laying in the yard, I did a little research to figure out a way to make tomato cages out of bamboo. Already I've poked a stalk of bamboo next to some tomatoes, but it's just not enough to support all the branches. I found an article at e-how about "How to Build a Bamboo Tomato Cage" and adapted it for my tomatoes. As I was building the first cage today I realized there is no magic one size fits all tomato cage since everyone's tomato needs are different. I have some areas where I have two or four tomatoes of varying heights and sizes growing along side one another, and I have other areas where I have a lone tomato plant. They are spread throughout my garden. In order to make most efficient use of the bamboo as well as my space, I built one cage that supports two plants today.

As you can see, it is important to build a tomato cage with the proper supervision. Ami passes by just in time for the camera to go off, on her way to a shady spot where she casually watched my progress.

I planted the three back poles first, and then beginning with the bottom, I added smaller stalks broken from the top of the bamboo poles (some of the poles are well over 10 feet tall!), working from the bottom up. I used zip ties to hold the sides in place. It's not perfect--as I worked along I realized ways I could have built the cage and used less zip ties. Next time I'll run one long pole across all three rather than shorter ones linking each bamboo pole. I did this along the back, but for some reason (maybe the sun was getting to my brain?) I didn't do that on the front. I'm not sure I like the looks of plastic zip ties in my garden, but you do what you gotta do!