This is an original that Marisa and I discovered by accident nearly two years ago. We are really excited to share this one because it truly is something unique and a winner all the way around.
We love growing tomato plants year after year. There are two problems with growing tomato plants, for us at least. Birds, and they hang and self destruct. Some use CDs, pie pans, or shiny ribbon to distract the birds. Others use stakes, or cages to keep the tomato plants upright.
Here is a possible solution to both of those problems. Plant some morning glory seeds, or similar that possesses climbing, vine-like properties.... This works best if in a flowerbed near a railing or deck as depicted in the following pictures.
With no flowers to our knowledge in the flower bed, we decided to use that as our garden. We planted tomato plants the previous year. I think we had roughly nine of them that we purchased, sprouted beforehand. That year we had a lot of problems with insects, and even more destructive were the birds. We just so happened to have a couple of Morning Glories growing as well, purely by accident.
The following year, we had 48 new baby tomato plants growing. The seeds must have been dispersed due to the birds. We reorganized them and left the Morning Glories to do their thing. Their seeds were dispersed as well, but we never relocated them. We also learned that you could remove the "sucker" stems from the tomato plants, and then plant them as well for all new tomato plants (very effective). This helps keep the consumption season going longer.
As the season went on, probably close to 70 plants now, we realized that the Morning Glory vines were climbing aggressively up the tomato plants. Instead of intervening, we recognized an opportunity. We decided to use the Morning Glories as additional support for the tomato plants. The Morning Glories climbed the tomatoes and eventually adhered to the deck we had out back. It was actually quite amazing.
The Morning Glory vines actually held the tomatoes in place, protected evaporation, and concealed the tomato's fruit (yes tomatoes are a fruit; Google it!) The amount of light blocked to the tomato plants was insignificant. We had more tomatoes than we knew what to do with. We were giving them away to the neighbors, making and freezing sauce, you name it.
We really liked the added benefit of the Morning Glory vines. Their extra cover distracted and eluded pest, and it didn't look like were growing vegetables at all.
Check out the pictures of our first accidental attempt at this. Hope you like the idea, and if you decide to use it this year, PLEASE post pictures or contact us with pictures and/or your story! We will share them for you and provide you with your own link on our site!
The following are pictures mid way through, before the tomatoes even took hold. You can see how the Morning Glory vines keep the tomato plants upright and provide some cover. While we still had pests in the form of insects (can see below), we never had to spray pesticides, and had very few bird attacks compared to the previous year.
-M@
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