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plant supports

Kids Post: Fun Ways to Support Your Plants!

May 11, 2022

Creating play areas or constructing garden structures that kids can help build is an easy way to make gardening fun all summer long.

Make or purchase strawberry towers for a fun way to grow your own.

Strawberry Tower
Building a planting platform for growing strawberries is a quick, easy, and attractive way to grow strawberries in a small space, keep the fruits clean and easy to pick.

Detailed instructions for building your own: How to build a strawberry tower – Master Gardeners of San Mateo and San Francisco Counties (ucanr.edu)

In Western North Carolina choose June-bearing varieties—Apollo, Bish, Cardinal, Chandler, Earliglow, Galleta, Sunrise and Tennessee Beauty are some recommended varieties. Set the tower up in a sunny area, add recommended amounts of a balanced fertilizer (such as 10-10-10) to potting medium (NOT garden soil), tuck strawberry plants in the openings, water, and watch for the flowers to turn into fruit. You can also purchase strawberry towers online or at hardware or big box home improvement stores.

A homemade bean teepee makes a special garden spot.

Runner Bean Teepee
A simple 6- or 8-legged teepee frame, wound with twine and planted with runner beans can become the perfect place for children to play in the garden. Once the vines start racing up the poles, the structure will be shady, and as beans start to ripen, they can provide an instant snack.

To build bean teepees, there are many online sources including How to Make a Teepee for Your Climbing Beans (growveg.com)

Plant pole beans in WNC from May 1 to June 1 in a sunny spot where they won’t shade other plants that need sun. Kentucky Wonder and Greasy beans are two favorite varieties for the mountains. Test garden soil for fertilizer and lime recommendations and water weekly if it doesn’t rain.

Straw bale gardens can serve as formidable fortresses.

Straw Bale Gardening
A single bale of straw (not hay!) can grow flowers or vegetables with nothing more than plant seeds, a little potting soil, some fertilizer, and water. Form several bales into a fort or a passage from one portion of the garden to another. Aged bales—covered in black plastic and left in the sun for a few weeks—work best, but if you don’t mind some grain sprouts, any straw bale will do!

For small seeds, such as carrots, lettuce, or radishes, cover the entire top of the bale with potting soil before sowing. Tall crops, such as corn or tomatoes, require firmly anchoring the bales into the ground. As plants grow, the bale fort can become a great hideout, with fresh carrots, radishes, or flowers an added bonus.

More instructions can be found at Step by step of creating a straw bale garden |(uada.edu).  Or by reviewing the Wood Pallet and Straw Bale gardening video on this website: Wood Pallet and Straw Bale Gardening, (beginning at the 16:49 mark in the video.)

Article written by Anne Spruance, Extension Master GardenerSM Intern.

For more information:
Strawberries: https://macon.ces.ncsu.edu/2020/03/starting-your-strawberry-patch/
Beans: https://wilkes.ces.ncsu.edu/2020/05/grow-your-best-series-snap-beans/
Straw bale gardening: https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/2071/2013/12/Straw-Bale-Gardening.pdf
North Carolina Vegetable Planting calendar: https://extensiongardener.ces.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/NC-Vegetable-Planting-Guide.pdf?fwd=no

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Categories Gardening for Children, General Gardening Tags bean teepee, children gardening, plant supports, straw bale gardening, strawberry tower

Support Your Plants: Ways to Make Your Garden Healthier and More Fun!

July 23, 2020

Are your vegetable plants encroaching on your garden paths? Are you finding giant, inedible cucumbers hiding under foliage? Time to think about garden structures! Create these supports from hard materials—wood, plastic, metal, concrete—to enhance the growing of vegetables or other plants. Such structures can provide space, support, and creative expression to enhance your garden.

Steps for using plant supports in your garden:

  1. Plan: Consider plant characteristics and direction of the sun.
  2. Prepare: Build your structure sturdy enough to support your chosen plants.
  3. Train:  Some plants need to be fastened or tied.  Others need to be gently wound around a stake or string where they will continue growing.
  4. Water: Use an irrigation system, soaker hose, garden hose, or watering can—always water at the bottom of the plant.
  5. Harvest: Using garden structures and supports for vining and top-heavy plants will enable you to plant closer together and have a larger and healthier harvest from a smaller space.
Planted row of beans with supports by MARamsey
Beans with supports

Gardening in small places.
When you’re concerned about lack of space, there’s always the possibility of getting plants to spread up! When planning and planting a garden, it’s important to consider how much space each plant needs to be healthy and productive. Be mindful that trellised plants do cast shadows, so consider what neighboring plants might be blocked from the sun.

 

Ramsey Garden-Combining practical and whimisical
A well supported veggie garden

Disease prevention.
Supporting tall or vining plants allows for air circulation, which helps prevent fungal and other diseases. Such structures not only help prevent wind-broken branches—which can foster pests and diseases—but they can also prevent soil splashing onto leaves, which can result in fungal diseases. For vegetable gardens, supporting vining plants makes for cleaner and often healthier produce because the harvest will not be on the ground.

Match your supports to your plants.
Plants with tendrils, such as peas and pole beans, will wrap themselves around posts and strings. Tomatoes are frequently tied onto stakes or wire cages. Most cucumbers or melons can benefit from supports that are sturdy enough to hold the weight of the growing bounty. These heavy-duty supports can be made from wood, canes,metal, PVC plastic, and string or wire.

Bean tunnel in the Ramsey Garden
Tomato cage for support
Cucumbers on masonry reinforcement ladder

Functional whimsy.
There’s also a creative enjoyment in either incorporating found objects into your garden as supports for plants, or to use already existing structures. Fasten peas, cucumbers, or sunflower stalks to old window frames. Have your tomatoes climb a fence or baker’s rack. Let your pole beans, climbing nasturtiums, or moon flowers weave their way onto a scarecrow or up the post of a bird house. These supports bring harvests of fruits and vegetables—and smiles!

Sunflowers with window frame supports
Moonflower on a scarecrow
Beans on birdhouse post

Article by Mary Alice Ramsey, Buncombe County Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

For more information:
UMN Extension: Trellises and Cages to Support Garden Vegetables
NC Extension Gardener Handbook- Chapter 16. Vegetable Gardening Techniques. Vertical Gardening

Bartlett, Michael V. and Rose L. The Bartlett Book of Garden Elements. David R. Godine, 2014.
Bartholomew, Mel. All New Square Foot Gardening: 3rd Edition. Square Foot Gardening Foundation, 2018.

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Categories General Gardening Tags plant supports, vegetable gardens, vertical gardening

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