What did you do in the garden today?

[LifeSimpleAndSweet]

in my climate untreated wood would last max 2 years. but if you stain it with burnt oil (when you change oil in your car just save it) it will last long. plants will not be affected.

I have wanted to try that! Lumber, sawhorse, paintbrush, and a bucket of old oil. A few coats later, it's supposed to have some real longevity.

 

[LifeSimpleAndSweet]

Yikes! I have never covered my strawberries with mulch for the winter - and I live in zone 3b! I guess I'm lucky any survived. This fall I'll cover them with leaves for sure. I'm still learning....

I never mulched mine, either. Always felt a little guilty, but never had any trouble with them coming back. Zone 7.

 

[Paz]

watered and fertilized the garden. That’s it. I also need to transfer parsley into a permanent pot.

 

[Tahai]

Last year I bought a bunch of heavy wire tomato cages that looked really good. Unfortunately, they are breaking off at the welds/solder points and just falling apart. I'm very disappointed with them. So, this year, I think I will try and build some tomato cages out of scrap wood and see how that goes.

Here is a picture of what I currently have in mind...

If anyone has already made tomato cages out of new wood, pallet wood, or reclaimed wood, and has any lessons learned, I'm asking for your experience in what works and what does not. Thanks.

I tried something similar about 15 years ago. It worked, but not well. the cages were too big to reach the interior of the plants. I didn't prune the plants, just let them go wild, and so didnt' get good air flow. The 1st year was ok, but when I pulled them in the fall, I saw a lot of disease I had missed seeing during the growing season. The second year was when I got blighted, and it spread like wildfire through those cramped cages.

I've had much better luck in my growing zone with training them up strings.

 

[jerryse]

Had a little rain. It is humid and low 70s predicted. More plants came in the mail. Thought I was done but I was wrong. More seeds are up. More tomato plants are ready to plant out. Ones already planted are growing.

 

[TJAnonymous]

I'm 5b. I had probably 50ish plants, 25 each in two beds. I now have 1 plant in on e of the beds, and 6 in the other.

They seem to succumb to a virus or something...? Small spots on the leaves that get bigger and eventually the plant dies. The spot is white with a brown ring around it. Anyone know what this is, and if there's anything I can do to save them or prevent it?

I'm ready to give up on strawberries. SMH.

Does it look like this?

It's probably septoria leaf spot. That's also what killed off 99% of my strawberries and why I switched to the new barrel beds. It's a fungal infection that spreads from soil. I had only 3 plants survive in my original beds. I've been watching them and the new beds closely. So far, no leaf spot. I did spray them with copper fungicide as a precaution.

 

[TJAnonymous]

I'm considering putting windchimes and even a radio in the tree when my peaches get a bit bigger. Squirrels are the culprits here.

I'm going to try to put down blood meal and see if that deters the tree rats. No peaches to protect but last year they decimated my onions.

 

[gtaus]

The only lesson I learned was that trying to save money by building one giant tomato cage instead of individual ones made it really difficult to pick tomatoes.

I am going to make individual tomato cages. Thanks.

 

[gtaus]

I never mulched mine, either. Always felt a little guilty, but never had any trouble with them coming back. Zone 7.

Well, I have never felt guilty about not mulching my strawberry plants. I just did not know I needed to do it. Zone 3B here.

BTW, I just checked my strawberry bed and less than half the plants seem to have survived - without any mulch over the winter - so it looks like I will be rebuilding this year.

 

[gtaus]

I've had much better luck in my growing zone with training them up strings.

I don't grow the vine type of tomatoes. All my plants have been the bush type, and for those, I don't think you can train them to grow up a string. The wire tomato cages I bought work for the bush type tomato plants, but they are breaking at the welds.

I have lots of reclaimed lumber and pallet wood, so I am working out some ideas in my mind to cut the wood down into posts and slats to make some cages. Been watching some YouTube videos and getting more ideas. If it works... great. If it does not work... at least I did not spend any money on the project.