Fix, Plant, Build, or Grow It Sunday: Plant Supports for Flowers, Fruits, and Veggies

It isn’t enough to just breathe on and water your plants and trees. You need to literally support them too! In your veggie garden, plant supports help to reduce rotting of vegetables on the ground like cucumbers as the vines grow. Tomatoes get cages for support. Tall flowers and vines need support too!

If you’re like me and using Osmocote Plant Food, your flowers and plants from bulbs or seeds are jumping up! My cucumber vines are starting to run, my tomato plants are drooping over from the large tomatoes, and my gladiolus bulbs are about to flower! All these plants need different types of support.

The gladiolus bulbs are about 3 feet tall now and were starting to lean over. I placed plastic coated galvanized steel stakes that I found at OSH behind them and gently tied them to the stakes with garden tie tape. I saw this great picture on Pinterest that made use of steel stakes with tomatoes in a pot. I liked the idea so much that I bought another tomato plant to place in a pot and try the technique out myself! Too bad I can’t find the pin anymore. I thought I pinned it! As always on Pinterest, I’ll never find it again. If I do, I will certainly include the link here.

Last year, I was clueless about planting a vegetable garden. My two cucumber vines started to take over my garden patch. Not knowing what to do about it, I decided to get creative. I bought two white recycled plastic lattice trellises and tied them together at the top. I spread out the base of the tied lattices and pushed the legs into the ground forming an upside down V. The vines were them gently tied to the lattice with rubbed coated plant wire allowing the cucumbers to hang down between the two lattices making it so easy to harvest the cucumbers! I hope I can do the same thing with my lemon cucumbers this year. Did I mention how excited I am about lemon cucumbers this year?!

U-Hoops were a discovery I made last year. They look like simple mini trellises. I used a pair in a pot with a raspberry vine. Not only did the vine start to do better, after two years, it finally began producing raspberries! Too bad I forgot what type of raspberry plant it was because critters were snacking on my golden raspberries while I waited for them to turn pink! My golden raspberries are fantastic! It is amazing how much better food tastes when you grow it yourself!

You can also place lattice trellises behind vines in pots and planters to save space. I was planning on trying it with some zucchini plants I bought, but after seeing them in a friend’s garden, I have discovered that zucchini does not grow like a vine! It grows up and out into a huge 3-4′ circle . . . and I had no choice but to buy a six-pack of zucchini plants! Upon doing some quick research, I found that you can train zucchini to grow upright on a stake, but it looks like too much effort for me. Hmmmm . . . Does anyone want 5 zucchini plants? I’ll happily give them to you. Sigh.