Horizontal Stabilizers

When the garden beds are only 6-8" deep & are on concrete or have a weed barrier underneath, you really don't have enough depth to put up tomato cages.  We have had SO much WIND this spring - & then the one day we had 3/4" rain I went out & found many of our tomato plants laying on the ground.  Not good.  In the short term I just put in a bamboo pole to help support them.

We knew as they grew taller (those that were not next to the north side netting) would need some support help.  One thing I DID think through was to plant only DETERMINATE plants (those that grow only so tall & then stop - most of our tomatoes should stop at 4' tall) in the non-netting part.

So we've been experimenting.  First we created another metal structure.  These we put at the short end of the beds & yes mounted them the same way we did the vertical netting bars. 

This is about 2' wide

The first thing I tried was something called chicken netting... not what you're thinking - this is made out of plastic & while it's ok to be cut with scissors it was very time consuming.  Anywho this is what the first try looked like.

Added chicken netting - attached using tie wraps

This shows the hexagonal spacing - had to cut this by scissors

Plant went through it fine (for now)

You can see that the plant goes through it ok, but I really think as the plant would grow I'd have to do more cutting / removal of the "netting" & then next year - well what are the chances that the next plant would want to grow RIGHT THERE! :)


So DH & I discussed it & he asked why I didn't just use the white netting that we were using for the vertical net.  I told him that I couldn't think of a good way for it to be tied off on the long sides.... he wasn't sure it would need to be supported on all 4 sides.  After all we're just trying to keep the plant from falling over.

ALSO the netting is wider by 1 square than I needed for the vertical netting.  So when I was putting up all those nets, I was just cutting off this LONG net only 1 square wide.  Nope, didn't toss it as I figured the netting material is so nice that I might be able to use it again.  AH HA!

Same plant with netting used on vertical side

This is better pic - showing it going down the whole bed.  I left the bamboo stakes in for now until the netting can support them.

Here is a double row.

So, that is what it looks like.  It's using something we already bought & can be scooted to match where the plants are actually growing.  I can just put up one or two rows, whichever I need.  Too cool!

Did you notice all those wonderful looking green tomatoes!  YUM!  Won't be too long before they start to red up & YES.... I will have another feud with the mockingbirds.  So, stay tuned friends & we'll have pics of how we think we can put the green screening over these beds.  We're trying a few different ideas out now as I write this.  More experimentation - aren't you glad we're doing all this work?