Has55's Garden Photos, vertical growing with string

I prune the tomatoes this morning. Added some new pics from the garden beds.


after pruning


garden pics

LOOKS GREAT!!!!

+1

I wish I had gone with cinder blocks instead of Pine boards. I think next spring I will replace all of my beds with the cinder blocks.

Has55, your hoops are made out of conduit?  Do you have a bender?

CC

CapeCoddess wrote:Has55, your hoops are made out of conduit?  Do you have a bender?

CC

yes 1/2" EMT conduit. I thinking of changing the design to place them on top of the blocks. My DW had suggested that but I was "The Man"and hard headed. Eating cheese now.  The inside  space is smaller than my 4x4 beds, but we made up for the loss by extending the length of the beds. The hoops are narrow, but the ends tends to be tilted where it enter into the ground  which push the top blocks that are solid and easily moved. the lower bricks has gravel within them and don't move. The other option is to extend the PVC pipe up above the bed, then insert the EMT conduit into it, thus reliving the stress, but I wanted a neater look . I also wanted the shade cloth and later frost blankets.etc... to fall within the bed, but the way I have it now, they will drop on top of the blocks. This is one reason I going to try my DW suggestion. I will order some EMT Tees and 3 way 90's for the experiment.

How about using 2' rebar at each hoop end...like with the trellis's?

CC

Looks like you just need to change the angle of the bed and start the bend higher up on the EMT.  Of course, I don't know if your bender is fixed in terms of the bend etc.  You would be trying to get the sides in the ground going up straight and then make a higher arch.

yolos wrote:Looks like you just need to change the angle of the bed and start the bend higher up on the EMT.  Of course, I don't know if your bender is fixed in terms of the bend etc.  You would be trying to get the sides in the ground going up straight and then make a higher arch.

yes the bender is set. I thought about getting someone else to help bend it from the other side, so to increase the chance of a equal bend. But i'm also going to try DW idea. I'll keep posting.

Your beds look great. 

Very very nice!

What kind of bender are you using?

I have not bent any conduit (YET) but I have seen some videos where they come up straight, bend out at 45 then bend back in at 45. Could you do something like that?

ralitaco wrote:What kind of bender are you using?

I have not bent any conduit (YET) but I have seen some videos where they come up straight, bend out at 45 then bend back in at 45. Could you do something like that?

bender from hoopbender.
hoop benders

can you post the link of the videos you watched?

put up roller hooks for vertical growing yesterday. Got them from Johnny seed co.

Has,    Wow!  Neat!

Thanks for the video Has...I am going to try that technique this season. But I plan to try to have 2 stems going in a V...we'll see.

That was an awesome video. I did something similar but instead of string I used spiral tomato stakes.

Great info on suckering. It solved a couple of puzzles I have encountered in recent years of growing tomatoes. Thanks so much for sharing this, has55!

Here goes nothing.
I am attempting this method. I just tied a piece of twine on my pvc grid at the base of the plant. Then I tied another piece to that and over my top wood 2x2. I suckered off a bunch and stopped at the flowers.





You can't see it in either of these photos, but I have attached a piece of 3/4" EMT across the top down the center of the bed. I am still thinking about letting one of the suckers grow and then I would have 2 stems to tie off...one going to the center EMT and one going to the outside.
I want to say I saw that in one of the videos that Has posted from the LDS prepper.

Has anyone done this method with 2 strings/stems per plant?
Shoot, has anyone done this method with 1?

ralitaco- You can't see it in either of these photos, but I have attached a piece of 3/4\" EMT across the top down the center of the bed. I am still thinking about letting one of the suckers grow and then I would have 2 stems to tie off...one going to the center EMT and one going to the outside. wrote:I want to say I saw that in one of the videos that Has posted from the LDS prepper.

Has anyone done this method with 2 strings/stems per plant?
Shoot, has anyone done this method with 1?

I have tomatoes in two places.  One in my SFG garden that are in tomato cages.  In another place in my yard, I have a back up planting of tomatoes in case the other bunch of tomatoes get hit with diseases I may still have some survive (not SFG).  The second planting of tomatoes I use the string method hanging from above.  I used to use the string to wrap around the tomato stem as it grows but I found that to be a little too much for me.  Now I still use that method but I buy tomato clips to just clip the stem to the string rather than wrapping the string around the stem.  I do have two stems coming out of each tomato.  Hopefully, this year I will pay better attention to this part of the garden and keep it to two stems.

I'm also choosing to use the clip method to attached to the string, then the tomato plant. I haven't set it up yet, because I can't find my clips in my well disorganized shed. Ugh! I tried the string , wrap around the plant method last year. I did not like it. When I had the web netting, I used the clip method for the plants. It worked very well with that system, so I'm migrating it over to the vertical strings method.

has55 wrote: I can't find my clips in my well disorganized shed. Ugh! I tried the string , wrap around the plant method last year. I did not like it. 

I can't find my clips either.  I cleaned up all my storage areas but now I can't find anything.  So until I find them, I am using gardening Velcro strips to hold the stems to the string.

I can't find the rosette to my watering can. It's been quite a spring watering seeds and starts without it. Are we getting old or what?

CC

RT, Yes, I have used overhead "string" supports on the main stem and 2 or 3 or 4 suckers, only I use the plastic garden tape tied around the stems. It stretches a bit. My determinants are going crazy and I need to tie up a couple of selected suckers on each one. I still haven't decided how to tie up the indeterminants.