Container Gardening Complete

Job:06-700309 Title: CPS - Container Gardening Complete

700309 - ContainerGardens_001-272_FINAL.indd 162 5/24/17 12:16 PM
Job:06-700309 Title: CPS - Container Gardening Complete
Job:06-700309 Title: CPS - Container Gardening Complete

700309 - ContainerGardens_001-272_FINAL.indd 163 5/24/17 12:16 PM

Text Black Job:06-700309 Title: CPS - Container Gardening Complete#175 Dtp: 229 Page: 162^

700309 - ContainerGardens_001-272_FINAL.indd 162 5/24/17 1:07 PM

Caring for Your Containers 163

As with all things gardening, there are a

hundred different ways to complete a project,

and staking your plants is no exception. There’s

no right or wrong way to do it, as long as the end

result maintains the plants’ natural form and habit

without making it look restricted or soldierly. This

page shows some great ideas for staking, caging,

and trellising your container garden.

In addition to using commercially made plant

stakes, cages, and trellises, it’s also fun to use

natural materials to build support structures for

plants. It’s easy to build a teepee made from tree

branches and vines and place it over a container

to support the pea crop growing there. Here’s a

project that uses a recycled container and natural

materials to grow a hearty harvest of pole beans.

Wooden ladders make great trellises. Place them over

containers filled with vine crops, like these pole beans,

and you’ll soon discover it makes harvesting a snap.

While white PVC pipes aren’t necessarily pretty,

they sure do make versatile, inexpensive, and sturdy

trellises. This gardener built super-sturdy cages out

of PVC pipe and surrounded his containerized tomato

plants with them.

If there’s nothing in your container for a plant to

climb, try placing the container in front of a wall with

a trellis attached to it. This mandevilla plant is quite

happy to cover the wall behind it with flowers.

Wooden trellises and cages are excellent choices

for supporting plants in your container garden. With

a little finesse, you, too, can build custom wooden

trellises like this one to fit a particular size and shape

of container.

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