Spring Fever–Building Supports for vegetables

We have a long growing season, and our vegetable plants get really tall. When they get tall, the stems fall over and bend and we lose the vegetables. This year, we are trying to get ahead of the out of control growth, so we spent some time yesterday building some supports.

Cucumbers:

This one was fairly straight forward. We put two 7 ft. t-posts at each end of the stock tank and I zip-tied garden stakes horizontally to give the cucumbers something to climb. The soil in the tanks is still really loose, so it was easy to push the t-posts into place.

The tomato plants are more complicated because they have a lot of branches and get even taller than the cucumbers. First we started by putting four t-posts into each of the stock tanks that we will use for tomatoes.

Then we cut sections of cattle panel (that we bought from TSC) that were just slightly larger than the tank with a pair of bolt cutters. The bolt cutters leave a very sharp edge that Mike had to grind off so that no one would get cut by them.

We put the cattle panel over the four posts and secured one side with the clips that come with t-posts, and the other side with zip ties.

Then we added another panel above that one. We did three of the five tanks this way because we are planning to grow 12 Roma tomato plants here.

We had just enough cattle panel to finish the job, but none left over.

Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day here and this is what we did instead of chores….