Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[NanaK]

Now a few of my tomato plants are growing up and over the top of the trellis - about 7 feet - so I will just let them do whatever they want for the rest of the season.

This is great! I do the same. The photo was taken in June. When they get to the top of the post, they just bow over and keep growing.

I am sometimes pulling green tomatoes just before frost. That won't happen this year. We had a lot of rain, then Debby brought lots more. We pulled the plants last week. Thankfully I have a lot canned but no more fresh from the garden. I'll be planting the fall garden soon.

 

[fuzzi]

I would leave at least 3 suckers especially since your season is short. Depending on how many tomato plants you grow, you could experiement a bit by leaving 2, 3 or 4 on different plants and see what you think.

You need enough foliage to shade the fruit so the sun does not scald them.

If you leave a few suckers on a plant you can always remove it later if you don't like the way it's growing.

I like to remove the foliage and suckers low on the plant and mulch them too. This keeps the soil from splashing up on the foliage and deters fungal diseases. You may not have all the issues with foliage diseases that I do here in NC.

You do know you can root the suckers and make more plants? They root easily.

My rooted tomato sucker bottom right.

 

[gtaus]

@gtaus , I trained my indeterminate tomatoes up ropes last year, removing all the suckers and they didn't seem to thrive.

This year I allowed one of the lower suckers to grow, so each plant has two stems producing fruit. The plants seem to be doing much better than last year's vines.

I think that the extra foliage from the sucker makes the plants healthier... more leaves, more photosynthesis.

Thanks. Next year I will not prune as heavy. My plants are doing well, but I think they would have done better if I knew what I was doing with the pruning. Like I said, they look "thin" to me, and I imagine that translates to less photosynthesis and fewer potential tomatoes.

I really do like the rope method for the indeterminant tomatoes. That part is working out well for me.

 

[gtaus]

You do know you can root the suckers and make more plants? They root easily.

No! I did not know that! I guess I'll be looking up that subject on YouTube later tonight. I had a few long suckers that I cut off that already started having little tomatoes on them. They would have been great to use as starters if I would have been smarter. Thanks for the info.

Just thinking that makes it all the more reason to add those vertical trellis frameworks to my raised beds I have been talking about. I had a 4X4 foot bed full of eggplants that got dug up and eaten or killed by either some rabbits or squirrels. I ended up planting some green onions in there rather than give up all that empty space. But if I would have known about transplanting or rooting suckers from other plants, I would have planted more tomato suckers in that bed - provided of course that I had a trellis ready for them.

 

[Smokerbill]

Thanks. Next year I will not prune as heavy. My plants are doing well, but I think they would have done better if I knew what I was doing with the pruning. Like I said, they look "thin" to me, and I imagine that translates to less photosynthesis and fewer potential tomatoes.

I really do like the rope method for the indeterminant tomatoes. That part is working out well for me.

I tied the pairs of vines growing from each plant to a single rope and they don't seem to be crowded. I know you mentioned adding more ropes to tie the extra vines to, so I just thought I'd mention what I did. I'll post a pic of them next time I get my camera out into my garden.

ETA: I take it back. I guess the pairs of vines are kind of crowded, especially with the cherry tomato plants which just keep on growing. They must be 9 feet tall now. But even as crowded as they are I think they get plenty of ventilation.

I tend to make the most of my gardening space. I set my tomato plants about 16" apart.

 

[gtaus]

I tied the pairs of vines growing from each plant to a single rope and they don't seem to be crowded. I know you mentioned adding more ropes to tie the extra vines to, so I just thought I'd mention what I did. I'll post a pic of them next time I get my camera out into my garden.

ETA: I take it back. I guess the pairs of vines are kind of crowded, especially with the cherry tomato plants which just keep on growing.

Well, I saw on YouTube that if you let a sucker grow, you should drop down a separate line for that branch to grow up on. I have lots of space on my trellis to drop down separate lines.

 

[gtaus]

Dear Wife put in a request for another pallet wood planter for her "wild" garden. I finished the building of the project in the morning. Then she came out and told me where she wanted the planter placed. Had to use a small shovel to level off the planter because that garden is planted on a slope. Anyways, here is a picture of the new pallet wood planter in her "wild" garden...

That planter was made to order at 16X16X16 inches. Of course, she does not need 16 inches of topsoil in the planter for her flowers, so I filled the bottom ~10 inches with pallet wood bits and pieces from my cuttings...

Wood is wood, so I don't have a problem using my bits and pieces from pallet wood cut offs to use as a hügelkultur filler. Got rid of more than one 5-gallon bucket full of pallet wood off cuts in that planter. Much better use of those off cuts than just burning them.

I will mix up some chicken run compost and topsoil 1:1 and Dear Wife will use that to top off the planter. I really like the hügelkultur method of adding wood to my planters and raised beds. Of course, every year some of the wood decays and some soil works its way to fill the voids between the wood, so the soil level of the planter needs a top off of fresh compost every year. But I actually consider that a positive thing because the decaying wood feeds the plants from below and the fresh compost on the top feeds the plants from above. In theory, every year that planter should get better.

Not only are pallet wood bits and pieces great for filler, but they will also soak up and retain water in the planter. That wood will act like a giant water battery, releasing the moisture to the plants as needed. The older the wood gets, the more it turns into a sponge like consistency, and it retains even more water. That's a great feature of using wood as opposed to other fillers like concrete, plastics, or broken pieces of pots - all of which I used in years past.

Anyways, Dear Wife was very pleased with her new pallet wood planter that I built. Happy wife, happy life!

 

[Sally PB]

I told hubby that next year I need to put a stake into each tomato cage, since most of them were pulled over by the heavy tomato loads the plants have. He agreed. I said the stakes probably need to be 6 feet tall, as they'll need about 2 feet in the ground to support the tomato plants.

I'm not going to buy 50 six foot T-posts. I have some, but not 50. So maybe some pallet stringers will help out.

 

[chickengr]

I told hubby that next year I need to put a stake into each tomato cage, since most of them were pulled over by the heavy tomato loads the plants have. He agreed. I said the stakes probably need to be 6 feet tall, as they'll need about 2 feet in the ground to support the tomato plants.

I'm not going to buy 50 six foot T-posts. I have some, but not 50. So maybe some pallet stringers will help out.

do you have any canes or similar growing in your area?

I was born in zone 7. my grandfather used to go to the woods and cut hazelnut sticks (5-6 ft tall). can you find anything growing wild in your area?

 

[Molpet]

I told hubby that next year I need to put a stake into each tomato cage, since most of them were pulled over by the heavy tomato loads the plants have. He agreed. I said the stakes probably need to be 6 feet tall, as they'll need about 2 feet in the ground to support the tomato plants.

I'm not going to buy 50 six foot T-posts. I have some, but not 50. So maybe some pallet stringers will help out.

I put a cage made from field fence in a circle on either side of a t post. I go through the top of the fence over the post