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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Market-farming Digest, Vol 60, Issue 25

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: Cory and Shanti Rade <whipstone AT aol.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Market-farming Digest, Vol 60, Issue 25
  • Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:58:40 -0500

We trellis our cucks.  We definitely get more straight, unblemished (becaue they don't sit on the ground) fruits by far with trellising.  But mostly the ease of harvesting is the best advantage and makes it worth the effort. We used to use rolled field fence attached to t-posts but found it heavy, hard to strech, and expensive if you need to buy more.  We switched to using Hortnova Flower Support, a 6x6 inch durable netting, attached vertically to t-posts or rebar pounded in the ground.  It does require a lot of pulling the vines up and weaving them into the netting.  We probably do it about twice before picking starts and then everytime, as we pick, we put the vines up as we go.  Some times the vines are fragile and break off, but maybe this works a bit like the pinching, which I have never done but might try this year, I don't think it diminshes the plant growth at all, by the middle of the season they are huge hedges. At the end of the season we roll up the netting, let it dry for the winter.  The next season we stomp on the rolls and all the trash comes out when you unroll it.  We have used it up to 4 or 5 seasons
We also plant several successions about every 3-4 weeks, this seems to be the only way to get consistently good quality.  We also use this netting to trellis pole beans, peas, and horizontally for some flowers.
Hortnova is available (the cheapest I have found) from G&M Agricultural Supply (800)901-0096 at about 3,200 feet for $200

Whipstone Farm
21640 N. Juniper Ridge Rd.
Paulden, AZ 86334

I use t-posts and roll fencing.  I've done this for two years and had 
poor results one year and good results last year.  The biggest 
difference was that the first year I relied on the plants to vine up the 
fencing on their own, but last year I used an ag-clip to tie the vine on 
the fence to get it started in climbing.  Quality of the cukes went way 
up compared to cukes grown on straw mulch on the ground.  They were much 
straighter and looked real good.   My Suyo Long cukes did especially 
well on the fence.

Andy

Glen Eco Farm wrote:
> I have never had any real success with getting cucumber vines to climb 
> vertical trellises.  I generally allow cucumber vines to sprawl and they 
> usually do OK with the exception that a lot get missed by my PYO customers. 
>
>   



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  • Re: [Market-farming] Market-farming Digest, Vol 60, Issue 25, Cory and Shanti Rade, 01/31/2008

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