Pics from my garden

[Ligure]

This year I got permission to redo the garden area in our backyard. It was kind of "artistic" but not functional and it was a swamp in the winter. So I happened to learn all that I needed to accomplish this at the right time. In addition to terraforming (to get rid of the swamp) combined several method and structural elements together. Here I am at July and I thought I would post some of my results.

This first post has pictures from May (sorry no before pictures of the swamp or weed jungle). Just to summarize in order to get it this far we dug out the sinking earth medium (a rich composted soil that kept decomposing and sinking. Then we added fill sand to brink it back up to grade with the bordering sidewalk. On that we placed new 4'x8' garden boxes (better drainage in Oregon with cardboard underneath to block any initial weed growth. The boxes are in aisles with durable landscape fabric on the sand to keep the weeds down. From the initial setup I transplanted raspberries and lavender. The metal hoops over the back boxes are made with a EMT conduit bender.

Anyway I hope these pics give folks ideas and inspiration.

Ligure

[Ligure]

And from July (today). You can see the peas have really taken off (8' high). I also have some closeups on how I have been trellising the squash and tomato (indeterminate). Last year I caged my Amish Paste tomatoes and they fell over in the wind. So this year I and training them up a string. I am growing my winter squash vertically as well.

Ligure

[signseeker]

You'll have to let us know how the "strings" worked for the tomatoes and squash... seems like it wouldn't be strong enough. Do you have much wind there?

[prairiemom]

Yeah, I tried staking tomatoes and securing them with twine last year. Didn't work too well. I'm trying a couple new cage styles this year (posted in the other thread about gardens.) They're a little spendy, but if they work, maybe it'll be worth it.

[signseeker]

I read in my favorite gardening book (Joy of Gardening, by Dick Raymond) that he got more production when he let his tomato plants totally go... no supports, no nothing. I had a few volunteer tomatoes come up and I'm going to let them just go. We'll see what kind of mess we have around Labor Day, I guess...

[Toni]

I've had two kinds of experiences with just letting tomatoes grow. One is that they seem fine. The other is that the lower ones rot because they are on the ground when the plant gets watered, and many of the "inner tomatoes" don't ripen well because they don't get the sun (the latter tomatoes were small, cherry type - larger ones would have more of a chance to get the sun, I would expect). Also, I usually plant tomatoes on the east of a house because, in the places I have lived, the wind coming from the west seems to give them diseases or dry them out, or something. If I could have planted them in full sun and they stayed alive, the inner tomatoes may have had no problem ripening.

[phylm]

We raised a large amount of tomatoes back in the 90s for our small discount food store. Rather than put in the time and work of cages or trellises for them, we put down corrugated cardboard (saved our boxes all year) around the plants and covered all the ground between them. We also laid boards and 2' X 4's on the cardboard so that the wind wouldn't move it.The plants grew taller and opened out and spread on the cardboard. We found that they ripened earlier by being open to the sun, and had no trouble with rot or fungus.

Congratulations on your great garden, Ligure! A lot of work, but worth it, isn't it?

[Julie]

I did not have a lot of success with stringing up my tomatoes either. I made my own cages from heavy net fencing. They were pretty easy to do and was cost effective.
I love the "Joy of Gardening" book too.

[Ligure]

I should probably add that it depends on the type of tomato plant. Last year with the Amish Paste tomato (indeterminant) I tried caging it with two cages - the top one inverted and attached to the bottom one with plastic wraps. The plant was about 7' tall. The cages held together fine, but the late summer/early fall wind blew them over. I realized that the cages need to be anchored to something to keep them upright. I also realized that the cages tended to hold in the leaves and hide the tomatoes from the sun so that the plant did not get sun or ventilation. So I found the single string method from Mittleider Method (in Utah) and thought I would try it. However instead of making a 'T' post (which I had for my beans last year) which is a single leg and a bit unstable, I am using the EMT conduit with a bar bender to make hoops. This is a structure that has been used by the guy at thegardenmaster.com. The frame seems stable, and it is just a matter of training the plants to grow up the string. I am amazed at how readily they hold onto the string. I too was skeptical when I first learned about training the plant up a single string. I had tried having them grow up a string trellis before, but the fruit tended to weight branches across the trellis and break the branch. This seems to respect the growth direction of the branch and cause it less stress and yet add firmness of support and structure. I have done some research on others doing this and they have succeeded with it. Some have resorted to using nylons for support of heavy fruit, but others claim that is also needless.

I will let you know how they hold up when they fruit out.

Ligure

[Ligure]

You'll have to let us know how the "strings" worked for the tomatoes and squash... seems like it wouldn't be strong enough. Do you have much wind there?


Tidying up things here.

The strings worked great for the tomatoes, cucumbers, several of the squashes, and melons. For the spaghetti squash the strings worked great for the vines, but I had to also use hair nets and string to support the fruits.

Ligure