Sorry for the much delayed post, I've been busy getting ready for my next adventure, a little jaunt across the pond to Scotland, Ireland, and England! More on that later, now I want to tell you what I've been doing while I've been in Dallas!
Last May I decided to plant a little herb and vegetable garden for myself as a little experiment. I had never planted much really, aside from helping my mom pull a few weeds, but decided I wanted to venture into something new, so gardening it was! So after a trip to my local Nicholson Hardie, I was the proud owner of a few tomato, zucchini, and red pepper plants, and a variety of herbs!
Over the last couple of weeks my tomato plants have gone crazy! As you can see, something needed to be done to help them out, they are so heavy with fruit that the limbs are on the ground. This is why you are supposed to put tomato cages around your tomato plants when they are young, so you can train your plant to go up through them. Knowing this, my handy helper Blair brought me some tomato cages and we set them around the plant from the get go.
However, not fully realizing the importance of the cage, how quickly these plants grow and how heavy they get, there ended up being a few of the vines that decided to go their own way. Additionally, the bed they're planted in is slightly sloped causing some erosion, and the cages were starting to fall over.
So, my only goal for last weekend was to get these tomato's back to good standing (ha!) with the help of some stakes and twist ties.
Last May I decided to plant a little herb and vegetable garden for myself as a little experiment. I had never planted much really, aside from helping my mom pull a few weeds, but decided I wanted to venture into something new, so gardening it was! So after a trip to my local Nicholson Hardie, I was the proud owner of a few tomato, zucchini, and red pepper plants, and a variety of herbs!
Over the last couple of weeks my tomato plants have gone crazy! As you can see, something needed to be done to help them out, they are so heavy with fruit that the limbs are on the ground. This is why you are supposed to put tomato cages around your tomato plants when they are young, so you can train your plant to go up through them. Knowing this, my handy helper Blair brought me some tomato cages and we set them around the plant from the get go.
However, not fully realizing the importance of the cage, how quickly these plants grow and how heavy they get, there ended up being a few of the vines that decided to go their own way. Additionally, the bed they're planted in is slightly sloped causing some erosion, and the cages were starting to fall over.
So, my only goal for last weekend was to get these tomato's back to good standing (ha!) with the help of some stakes and twist ties.
This was how the tomatoes looked before I got started, the plant had gotten so top heavy it was pulling over the tomato cage with it!
The first step was the put the stakes in the ground, which I did with the help of my trusty hammer. I put three stakes around each plant to support the cage.
Then, using garden twist ties (never had seen them before, thought they looked interesting at Lowe's, you could use string) I pulled up the fallen vines and tied them up right either to a stake or the cage.
Seven dollars and thirty minutes later, my vegetable garden was looking much more promising...now I just have to figure out when they are ready to harvest and how to keep the squirrels from eating them!
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