Other Updates to the Garden

I wanted to show some of my other projects through the backyard.

I planted some mammoth sunflowers this year and they are awesome! The breed of mammoth sunflowers are to get as much seeds out of a sunflower head as possible. The blooms start out nice and pretty, but once the seeds have been fertilized they increase in mass, and begin to weigh the sunflower head down which causes the plant to bend over from the weight.

View of my four mammoth sunflowers with the rest of my veggies. 

Ms Bumblebee fertilizing the sunflower

Another bumblebee. This sunflower was 12 feet tall

My best shot I believe

I have also embarked on building a cheap version of the texas tomato cage. Since space is at a premium in my garage I need tomato cages that can break down to store them easily. I looked up the texas tomato cages and thought they were perfect! Then I looked at the price. I'm not spending that kind of money on what amounts to basically well formed wire. So I sought out to find an alternative.

When I was at Lowe's on a weekend afternoon buying supplies for another project I walked by the PVC pipe section. A moment of inspiration hit me. Why couldn't I use PVC to make a tomato cage? PVC is dirt cheap! All I have to do is cut it, and then keep stacking it while the plants continue to grow.

The pictures show my results.

First you cut the feet/base of the tomato cage to a foot in length. Then you stack the layers of the cage thereafter.

Begin two sides in horizontal parallel to begin the cage. Then add an additional 6 inches in height. Then add another horizontal layer perpendicular to the first layer. Each horizontal layer is cut to 8 inches in length.

The basic design is every layer in one direction has a foot in length between, but every six inches allows a plant to rest it's limbs.

To anchor the cage I used bamboo sticks sold to anchor tomatoes. After building the cage up to 18 inches to 2 feet in height I'll hammer the bamboo sticks into the ground on the inside of the PVC pipe.

Other than that, my insistence to not use pesticides is makes things interesting in the backyard. I submit a picture of a spider hanging out.

Spider doing it's thing. 

Boomasaurus hanging out in his natural environment. Crushing my ornamental plants.