Just a follow up to my previous post -
Homemade Tomato Cages. I'd be remiss if I didn't offer more information on whether this project was a success or failure. The tomatoes are both heirlooms and are about four feet high so they still have some growing to do, but the cages are supporting the plants very well.
I'm not ready to call this an unbridled success right now since that's a sure way to anger the Gods, but I will say that so far these tomato cages are performing excellently. We also have yet to harvest a tomato from these two plants, so it may dampen my enthusiasm if the T-maters are hard to get to or the cages somehow impede the gathering process.
In another few weeks, we'll start harvesting fruit and see if the plants start excessively spilling out of the cages (in which case I have no problem pruning them). I'm pretty excited about how these cages have done so far and am planning on building more for next year. I'll probably need to build another 8 to 10 of them for all of our Roma/paste tomatoes and our cherry tomatoes as well.
And as you can see I'm a big fan of surrounding the bottom of the tomato plants with marigolds. These are the "Lemon Gem" marigold, a small, compact marigold with a lovely lemon scent to the foliage, so every time you brush them you get a wonderful lemony smell that permeates the air.
2 comments:
Well, I'm glad to see the tomato cages have met and exceeded your expectations so far. Your tomatoes certainly have, too! That's a really neat idea, planting marigolds at the base, eye candy and food all in one place.
We just had a thunderstorm rage on through, I wonder what my tomatoes look like in their flimsy little hoops, they're probably flat. I will have to get Carl to work constructing El Gaucho-esque structures for next season.
I've read that marigolds are supposed to help some with bug repelling because of their stench... is there any truth to that? Also - methinks that all these awesome photos must be Blah blog fodder soon and/or for next year!!
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