When I moved back here my mom's yard looked like shit because dad always used to handle it, and it has been totally ignored for almost 2 years now. Needless to say I'm seeding/fertilizing/cutting almost every second day... the full Hank Hill treatment. Our lawn is now the best in the area... amazingly thick and dark green. The neighbour who is the self-proclaimed lawn expert is now asking me my "secret". No secret... just fucking seed and feed and cut more than is natural.
Word. I overseed the FUCK out of my lawn. Like, a giant bag on top of a not-so-big area, every spring. You can really tell who owns and who rents on my street. The renters let the fucking dandelions grow into two-foot white pompoms that send their grass-choking storm troopers my way. ....that's why I have a secret weapon: cheating. I get my lawn spray from Uncle Sam over in Port Huron loaded with their magical Christian juices that makes the lawn look frighteningly Spartan within a couple weeks. Like, a chemical shouldn't be able to just vapourize everything but grass like that. It's scary.
I get the vast majority of my insect/weed control stuff from across the border... all the "environmentally friendly" shit over here doesn't work worth shit. The big beech tree on the front lawn requires some Agent Orange level shit that requires a hazmat team to apply... but oh so worth it.
Right? Those lawn sprays they sell here cost over $40 and they simply don't work. The Round-Up substitutes don't work. We'll bring back two almost identical-looking lawn sprays from Michigan (only have a name like "Can-O-Poison") for half that price and the lawn looks like Graceland. I'm not dumping fertilizer or weed spray down storm drains or neighbour's gutters, so I think fighting the law a little won't hurt here.
I did not anticipate how large and how quickly these would grow. They are escaping like nobody's business. I need to figure out a practical, inexpensive way to train/support these or I'm going to have a bitch of a time maintaining these in about a week. Spoiler
They have too much produce and too many buds on them. I want to let it do its thing and take several suckers off when it gets too hot in the summer. Then I'll have another batch coming up for another crop this fall. I was thinking maybe a set of super tall stakes around the perimeter with line between to support and drape the vines. Or doing a similar thing, but making a simple frame with pcv pipe, but I'd have to price that. I'm not super committed to either idea.
I just planted so it is too early to post pics. I put in about 12 tomato plants, 6 pepper, 6 eggplants, 4 jalapenos, 6 cucumbers and a cayenne plant that survived inside during the winter. Hopefully the deer don't fuck me to bad this year as they got about 40 pounds of tomatoes at once. One tip is those tomatoes you picked in pic are still mostly green, let them fully color on the plant for the best taste. That's why the tomatoes in supermarkets taste like shit, they are picked when they are green.
Here is what I use: You can get them at 6 feet long and they are inexpensive. Just put them in near you longer vines and use twine to tie them to it. You can add more and tie higher up as needed.
Or if cost is an issue, just get some cheap 2x2x8 or 1x2x8 strapping and some screws and go to town with a saw... even a hand saw will be more than good enough. Just build a cube or rectangle over/around it as needed. You don't need much structural support, and you don't really have to worry about weather or pressure treating it. You can add cross pieces for support where the plants need it, etc.
You know I looked all over Lowes and Home Depot for something just like that an never found anything. I have a feeling it'd been easier to work with, even though you have to tie off a lot more, than the cages Im working with. Im also super jelly of the growing season you southerners have. Im still searching out pruining techniques that go along with my cages. I usually strip the bottom 18" of the plant to help avoid the disease splash from the dirt. Other than that I have to keep a spraying schedule fore tomato/tobacco horn worms. They tore up my shit at the end of last year. Ugly little shits when they have the wasp eggs on them (which doesn't seem to help eliminate them fast enough). You'd thing as fucking big as they are birds would be all over them.
https://www.homedepot.ca/en/home/p.1x2x8-framing-lumber.1000173739.html They call it strapping... it's what you use to frame out bulkheads, etc. I'm surprised they didn't have it... it's pretty common around here.
Let me know how your cucumbers do. I might try that next time. Do you grow cucumbers to eat plain or to pickle? I agree about the tomatoes. A girl I work with is trying tomatoes this year and insists on picking them green because she read online that you "can." If you have a pest issue I get it, but if you can let them ripen on the vine without being bothered, do it. The problem I have here is the heat. The red color develops at certain temps, so it essentially happens at night. I saw a trick where you put a banana outside with your tomatoes overnight to force them to ripen. That guy had a little farmer's stand and he had red, ripe tomatoes before anybody. Thanks for the tip about bamboo. I should be able to get that dirt cheap. I like Nett's idea about a basic scaffold with bamboo. That's something I could build myself and would be really effective.
Keeping a strict spraying schedule has been a key part of my success (so far). I spray about twice a week after a deep watering or heavy rainstorm. The little caterpillars moths lay that turn into tomato fruitworms/ corn earworms don't stop for much, and they hatch really fast. Stinkbugs are pretty constant, too. I am constantly visually inspecting the underside of leaves all over my tomatoes and peppers, brushing off pests into a bucket of vinegar, and hot shot spraying stink bugs with a concentrated spray I mixed up. There are always going to be pests around....it's just a matter of controlling them. And since I have a very small plot, I have less to lose so I have to stay on top of it. It took a long time to spray the first couple times but now that I have a system down it isn't that bad. You know, supposedly our growing season is "short" compared to other regions. I think the heat has to do with it. Tomato fruit won't set over a certain temp. I made sure I bought varieties that could tolerate more heat, so hopefully that will extend my season a couple weeks. This all being said, we had almost no winter last year and I anticipate a brutal summer, but according to the Farmer's Almanac our summer is supposed to be "cooler and dryer" than average. I want it to be true. If this upcoming winter is as brief as the last, there won't be a break between my fall and spring crops.
What do you use for spray with your tomatoes? I'm considering a fabric tarp essentially as Something kinda horrible likes to burrow into my tomatoes and chow down before I even get there. End up with little pin pricks and some asshole living inside.
Without seeing a picture it sort of sounds like you have stink bugs when you say pin pricks, there are plenty of things that burrow into tomatoes. With the size of the patch you have it should be easy to shade with a shade cloth. Since I got a super late start last year, like first week of July late, I think I blew half the productivity on the heat alone. I'd need a big ass shade cloth for my garden.
I use a gallon pump up sprayer but only need a half gallon of solution to cover everything in my 7'x17' plot, plus a few other potted plants on the patio. I use Neem and Thuricide bt. Without seeing the damage to your crop I can't say what is responsible, but Neem is a great all purpose food safe insect controller. Thuricide bt is for caterpillars. I mix 2T Neem, 1T thuricide, 2T dishsoap (dawn or similar) for a gallon of solution. Neem is an oil and this solution will separate, so i turn over my sprayer every so often to remix. The soap helps it stick to leaves. Make sure you cover the soil as well; the thuricide kills to caterpillar pupa that may be in the soil. Apply this in evenings to prevent burning of leaves. I use a spray bottle with more neem and some peppermint soap to hotshot stink bugs. If you use neem at a more concentrated level than the pump up spray ratio I described above, spray your plants down with regular water because it will burn your plants. I also use some diatamaceous earth on occasion, and the sharp edges of the egg shells I throw in there every week can help control slugs. I briefly considered a shade bit thought it too costly to construct. If I have to build a scaffold for thr vines it would be a small thing to add the shade on top. Has anyone used this method before? Does it help? What product did you use, or are there reasonable things I could recycle for this purpose? I am not trying to dump a lot of money into this. A lot of the stuff I am using was repurposed, recycled, purchased used, or able to be reused from season to season. The produce I've gotten so far is much tastier than store bought and I would love this project to save money over time on my grocery bill.
We've used bamboo too, to hold up heavy blooms on lilies. I like the natural look of it in the garden. Unrelated to that, this is the clematis I planted last year. Happy camper.
This is what I came up with. I'm pretty pleased with the cost effectiveness and re-usability. Spoiler
You can mix multiple sprays into those hand pump sprayers right? I'm got some neem oil and other insecticide and don't want to spray twice if I can mix both amount at once. I'm just trying to avoid doing it and finding a dead crop next week.