Tomato Fence

Tomato Fence

Yesterday (Nov. 20) I took home some leaves from the side of the road. They looked like they had not been mulched when I picked them up. When I opened the bags, I realized they had been; so I layered them into the compost bins. Now I have 1 1/2 bins of compost. I picked up more leaves today. Yesterday I also tested the soil in the raised beds, took down the tomato fence and picked some arugula. I measured out the pathway beside the raised bed too and hauled the rest of the legustrum wood to the firewood pile.

The soil in the raised bed is from 6.5 to 7 ph. That will probably be ok for the asparagus; but strawberries need 5.5 to 6 ph. If anyone is actually reading this and if you know how to lower ph, please tell me.

I like to be creative in the garden. A lot of my experiments turn out to be really stupid. My tomato fence is in the rare category of the things that work very well. I have tried all kinds of ways to stake tomatoes. Problems range from falling or blowing over to damaging the tomatoes to just being inconvenient. I have used the tomato fence for two years now and I think it is superior to anything else I’ve tried.

I took down an old rail fence that was about 8 to 10 feet inside the property line. It was a 3 rail fence; but I put it in the garden as a 2 rail fence. I had a lot of extra 8’ rails left. I tied them to the cross rails vertically with coat hanger wire. I bought plastic fence fabric from Home Depot and attached it to the rails as high as I could reach with bent nails. I tied the tomatoes to the fence with strips from old polyester rags.

The whole fence, which is over 30’ long comes back down and goes into storage in less than an hour.

David Segrest is an International REALTOR in Charlotte, NC. His email is david@segrestrealty.com , His webpage is http://www.segrestrealty.com , and his international real estate blog is http://dointernationalrealestate.blogspot.com/.