Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat

Growing => Growing in Greenhouses & Polytunnels => Topic started by: shokkyy on February 19, 2012, 21:01

Title: string supports in tunnels
Post by: shokkyy on February 19, 2012, 21:01

For the stuff that needs support, i.e. tomato, cucumber, melon, I was going to try out the string support method described in the Grow Food in your Polytunnel book. However, now that I've got all the beds built and filled, it's become obvious that's not going to be as straightforward as I thought.

The beds in my tunnel go right up to the edges, but the roof bars sit about halfway across the beds. If Iplant the tall stuff at the outside edge, that would mean the support strings would slant right across the bed. If I plant the tall stuff beneath the roof bars, that will either mean wasting half the bed width behind them or planting stuff behind them, which would likely be quite tricky to reach and may well be shaded by the tall stuff.

How does everyone else do this?

Title: Re: string supports in tunnels
Post by: mumofstig on February 19, 2012, 21:33

I tied string between the side frame pieces above where the toms were to be planted, and then strings from that down to the toms. When they reached that high I tied the plants to a string angled across towards the ridge bar.
So I had tall tomatoes at the back of the beds - growing up the strings and then bending towards the middle of the roof and lower growing bush toms or peppers growing near the path. it worked for me :)

Title: Re: string supports in tunnels
Post by: shokkyy on February 19, 2012, 21:59

Oh, that's clever, I hadn't thought of that :)

I'm going to have to be a bit more diligent about checking them daily this year then. Every year I mean to check them regularly but somehow forget for a week, by which time whoops, the tomatoes have somehow sprouted a second and/or third stem from the base. If they're hanging across like that, what do you do about supporting a heavy truss of tomatoes? I do sometimes end up having to stick in another cane to stop them from snapping off, and that won't be quite so easy with just string.

And do you find the string method works ok with cucumbers/melons as well as toms, or do they need some netting or something to scramble up?

Title: Re: string supports in tunnels
Post by: mumofstig on February 19, 2012, 22:18

Heavy trusses were just tied up willy nilly with string  :lol:

I had my cues on netting on the flat bits either side at the far end of the beds :)