Hanging Tomato Plant

Cullen: Tackle a project on the long weekend

— Claude Monet

The long Canada Day weekend is coming up and no doubt you are looking forward to hanging out with family and friends and maybe you will enjoy some fireworks. That’s fine for one day, but what will you do with the rest of your long weekend?

In recent years, I have made a habit of creating something permanent for a place that I love during the Canada Day weekend. Three years ago, I mixed some concrete in a wheel barrow and erected a flagpole. Naturally, there is a Canadian flag on the top of it. The following year I made a teepee-shaped pergola for the middle of my veggie garden. Today it supports a fruit producing grape vine and a honeysuckle that attracts hummingbirds.

Last year was the pièce de résistance. I took a full day to haul some hand-cut field stone into the garden and slowly moved them around until I had created the perfect place to sit and observe the progress of my food garden. The stones had been given to me by my late father, Len, when he was cleaning up an area on the Cullen Gardens property in Whitby. Evidently he wanted more land to grow strawberries and the monster rocks did not fit in with his plan.

If I Can Do It, You Can Do It

Those of us with the resources, skills and confidence to take on a permanent project are fortunate. But a comment made by a TV producer that I once worked with at HGTV said, “Mark, if you can do it I feel that I can do it. And I don’t do outdoor stuff.” As I ran this through my mental filters I interpreted this to mean, “You are such a klutz. If you can do it anybody can.” This little story may give you incentive to read on. Who knows, maybe you will come to the same conclusion.

I urge you to think about how you celebrate the 144th anniversary of the birth of our nation. You don’t have to lay a new interlocking patio or rebuild the deck. While these are ambitious projects, I suggest something that will make a difference to someone or something that is important to you.

   Build a blue bird nesting box: The magic of a blue bird box that actually attracts blue birds is simple: Use rough lumber in the interior of the box; drill a one and half inch hole (without a perch, so that predators will not get in); drill some ventilation holes in the sides of the box; build at least two — one for a house sparrow and another for a blue bird. Blue birds are not very aggressive, even a bossy house sparrow will out muscle a blue bird for squatting rights. Mount each box about five feet or 1.8 metres off the ground, facing east or south, and preferably surrounded by woods or other large plants for protection.

Hanging Tomato Plants Can Be A Good Option

Not all individuals who raise plants have enough space where they can grow many plant varieties. There are those who are lucky enough to have a large backyard, others modestly dwell in apartments or have simple urban homes. Yet, that shouldn’t prevent people from growing plants during their spare time. Among the hundreds of plant varieties, tomato plants are very popular because they are hardy and requires minimal attention. Besides, tomatoes can be added to almost any kind of dish or recipe. In case you really want to cultivate this plant, hanging tomato plants can be a very good option. For people who also show interest in how to choose the garden soil , the supplies of Bark or compost , you can check online.

Raising hanging tomato plants provides many benefits. First of all, they need less watering due to the fact that the soils  absorbs the water immediately and excess water can dry up. As contrary to watering tomatoes planted in the soil, excess water can accumulate which build moisture into the stems. As amatter of fact, you even have to cut and peel part of the bark few inches from the soil to see the real problem. As a result,rotting tomatoes caused by bacterial wilt happens. Hanging tomato plants release excess water due to gravity. Besides, watering hanging tomato plants specifically from the top directly hydrates the plant roots without causing much moisture to the stems.  

Growing hanging tomato plants is also one surefire method of protecting the plants from common garden pests. In many cases, pests such as as aphids, green fly, white fly, and slugs, leaf miners, spider mites and caterpillars thrive in greenhouses as well as open spaces. Pests and other animals like slugs usually climb the fruits near the ground in a garden. Hanging tomato plants eliminates such problems especially if you wrap some stems with newspaper. This would discourage bugs climbing the plant container to reach the plant.

Lastly, hanging tomato plants have actually more abundant produce during harvest time. This is due to the reason that all exposed parts of the plants are bathed in full sunlight. Also, air circulation is promoted by the pull of gravity. The stems would gravitationally be pulled and grow downward that result to larger fruits. Cherry or roma tomatoes are ideal varieties for hanging tomato plants.

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