Yearly Archives: 2010

Staking Tomatoes with Concrete Reinforcing Mesh

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Gardening, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening
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For years we’ve been using concrete reinforcing mesh to stake our tomatoes. It’s a 6-inch square grid of wire and is used to reinforce concrete slabs. I buy it in 3 1/2-feet by 7-feet sections at my local home improvement center. To make a tomato cage with it you find a flat stretch of patio or driveway and bend the wire into a tube. I overlap it a bit and tie it together with wire.

This year, thanks to a tip from Craig Ruggless, I decided to double the height of the cages using two per plant to make them 7-feet high. As the plant grows, you simply tuck the vines into the cage, with no pruning necessary. But you do have to stay on top of the tucking, otherwise you risk breaking off stems. Since a 7-foot cage can be very top heavy I staked them deep into the ground with some rebar I had laying around. Long wooden stakes would work just as well. You could also choose to grow shorter tomato varieties. The San Marzano tomatoes in the middle of the picture above are half the height of the other two and way more productive.

Another staking option is to buy Texas Tomato Cages for $99 for six 24-inch by 6-foot cages. The advantage with the Texas cages is that they fold flat when not in use. The disadvantage is the price. If you buy your concrete reinforcing mesh in bulk, on long rolls, the price would be significantly less than the Texas Cages and I think reinforcing wire is just as attractive if rolled carefully.

I would avoid the tiny, flimsy conical cages I’ve seen for sale at most nurseries as almost every tomato plant will easily outgrow them and stems will break as they spill over the top.

For a roundup tomato staking techniques see the Santa Clara County Master Gardeners website.

And leave some comments about your favorite staking and/or pruning methods.

Foreclosure Garden Foreclosed

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Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
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Neighbor, artist and master gardener Anne Hars took over the front yard of a foreclosed triplex earlier this year and planted a vegetable garden. The triplex had fallen in to disrepair and had become notorious for housing a bunch of gang members.  The police evicted the gangsters and the building fell into disrepair.

The garden Anne planted in the spring had just begun to bring forth its bounty.

Then, this past week, an unpleasant man showed up claiming to work for Bank of America.

That was the end of the garden.

As Anne put it, “this is how the banks take care of their property…”

Read the whole saga on Anne’s blog, theforeclosuregarden.blogspot.com.

It ain’t “eco” if you can’t fix it

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Thoughtstylings
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In the past month I had to repair two kitchen appliances–a 50 year old O’Keefe and Merritt Stove with a broken door spring and an expensive 1990s model “eco-refregerator” called a Conserv, with a torn freezer gasket. The winner: O’Keefe and Merritt! Why?

The torn freezer gasket of the Conserv, as it turns out, is an integral part of the door. After a painfully long call to the parts distributor’s Indian call center I found out that, to repair the gasket, I would have to buy a new door at a cost of $400.

My beef? The Conserv violates several of the tenets of Mr. Jalopy’s Maker’s Bill of Rights, a manifesto of design principles that, if manufactures abided by them, would make things a hell of a lot easier to repair. Here’s a few of the Maker’s Bill of Rights statues violated by the Conserv,

“Cases shall be easy to open.”

“Components, not entire sub-assemblies, shall be replaceable.”

“Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought.”

By way of contrast, the old O’Keefe and Merritt stove’s components are all easily dissembled with a screwdriver. It took just a few minutes to remove the side panels and replace the broken door spring.

In the end, I patched the Conserv’s gasket with glue and a piece of a bike tire inner tube. We’ll see if it holds. It would be a shame to junk this otherwise excellent and efficient refrigerator over a gasket worth pennies.

I propose an amendment to the Makers Bill for “green” manufacturers such as the Vestfrost company who manufactured the Conserv: “If you’re going to call something “green,” “efficient,” or “eco,” you have to abide by all the tenets of the Makers Bill.” In short, if you’re going to make eco claims you better be able to make repairs.

No garden space? Check this out

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Gardening
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Follow this link to the Eastsider blog for a little profile piece on a man raising crops in a median strip. This is exactly what we should all be doing. Well, except maybe standing in traffic to water–if at all avoidable–but I do tip my hat to this intrepid fellow gardener.

There’s so much wasted space in this city. Yesterday Erik and I were walking down the sidewalk, admiring a flat stretch of dry, weedy ground betwixt sidewalk and street, 10 feet across and almost a block long, with perfect East-West sun exposure. We wondered how much food could be grown in that space. Probably enough to put veggies on the table of everyone living in the apartment building fronting that strip.

Magenta Spreen Lambsquarter

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Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
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Magenta Spreen Lambsquarter (Chenopodium giganteum a.k.a. “tree spinach”) has reemerged in our garden via the compost pile. It’s a striking edible weed, part of the family that encompasses spinach, quinoa and epazote. Seeds of Change sells this beautiful variety, oddly named “Magenta Spreen.” Like other members of the Chenopodium family it has a fair amount of oxalic acid which could be a problem if it’s all you ate. Even though I’m prone to kidney stones I’m not concerned about oxalic acid in moderation. Cooking reduces oxalic acid as well as saponins that the leaves also contain.

The Plants for a Future database entry on Chenopodium giganteum has a few cultivation details,

“An easily grown plant, succeeding in most soils but disliking shade. It prefers a moderately fertile soil. This species is closely related to C. album, and was probably derived from it through cultivation. The tree spinach is sometimes cultivated for its edible leaves, there are some named varieties. ‘Magentaspreen’ is a vigorous plant growing 1.5 metres tall. It has large leaves, the new growth is a brilliant magenta colour. Tastiest when young, the leaves are eaten raw or cooked like spinach. A warm climate is required in order to ripen the seed.”

Chenopodium giganteum has a tendency to become invasive, but I prefer to think of it as what Craig Ruggless of Garden Edibles calls a “happy wanderer.”