Props for Floppy Flowers, Cucumbers

Bean Poles

Poles for pole beans must be anchored well — two feet into the ground — or they’ll blow over in a summer thunderstorm. Instead of going to all that work, tie three poles together at the top, spread them tepee fashion, then push the bottoms into the soil and plant around them. Children love the natural tepee they form.

Save your Christmas trees for bean poles. In our garden, we drive six-foot high metal fence posts into the ground and, with twistems, attach a Christmas tree, its branches cut to short stubs, to extend two feet above the tops of the metal posts. The roughness of the stubby tree trunk provides a good grip for the bean vines, and the metal post the sturdiness they require. (Collect unsold Christmas trees from local markets immediately after Christmas to prepare summer bean poles and use the sheared-off branches as winter protection for perennials.)

Set eight-foot high wooden poles three feet apart. Run twine from the top of each pole to the bottom of the adjacent poles, forming Xs for x-tra climbing space for the beans.

Train Those Cucumbers

Use a concrete-reinforcing wire cage (as described for tomatoes) three or four feet in diameter. Plant cucumber seeds around the circumference. (Use the inside as a collector for composting materials and toss in a bit of manure, to feed the cukes.)

Ray Lambert uses an old metal clothes-line support. He drives two stakes under the outer edges of the T and runs twine, just above the ground, from them to the center post. He pokes pieces of twineground string. Under each vertical length of twine he plants a cucumber seed. through the holes in the cross piece of the support and attaches them to the

Make an A-frame for cucumber or squash vines. Construct two wooden rectangles, attach hog wire or nylon trellis netting to the frames, and hinge at the top.

Props for Floppy Flowers

Make cylinders of varying heights from green plastic-coated pea fencing with 2″ x 2¹/2″ mesh. Place over plants in early spring, before they are more than a few inches high. As the perennials grow, their foliage pokes through the mesh so the cylinder is hardly noticeable. (If you wait until the plant needs staking, you may break it as you try to wiggle the cylinder over it, and it will never look natural.) For most plants, there’s no need to attach the cylinder to the ground. Occasionally, a heavy delphinium may tip it over. Just poke a stake through the mesh and into the ground. This system works for any “clumpy” plant, such as coreopsis, gallardia, baby’s breath, or delphinium.

Straighten the hook of a wire coat hanger and pull the long side of the triangle up to form a diamond. Stick the straightened hook wire into the ground and use two or three to prop up floppy plants. Prepare a supply now to have handy when you need them.

For peonies, cut circles of chicken wire the diameter of each peony clump. Drive one stake behind the clump and very early, when sprouts are emerging from the ground, lay the circle over them and the stake. As the peonies grow, let the chicken wire circle rise to keep them from sprawling.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Props for Floppy Flowers, Cucumbers

• Garden Vegetable Cucumbers Growing Tips
• Harvest my Garden Plants for the best possible Yields
• Garden Plants Support, to Stake or Not to Stake
• The Vegetable Box continue...
• Vegetable Garden Planting Vine Crops (Soil, Sowing, Fertilizer, Watering and harvest)
• Cucumber
• When to water a seed bed
• Sowing Seeds Indoor
• Saving Seeds
• Green Garden Seeding and Sowing, How to Do It