When the Florida weave was first introduced to me at the Grow Appalachia conference in 2014, I just did not believe how easy it was.

Last year, we attempted to just stake our tomatoes using about 4′ stakes, and as you can already guess, this did not work well at all. It resulted in tomato plants falling over everywhere.  As for our peas, they never ended up doing well enough to even bother trellising.  Last month though, I decided to test this little Florida Weave out, and see if it really was as easy and effective as everyone kept saying it was. Turns out, they were right. You can see our peas below, and we will be putting up more this weekend for out tomatoes.

trellis 2

 

peas2

 

I mean it really was as simple as the following directions:

  1. Place stakes in the ground every 2-3 plants.
  2. Tie the end of the string to the stake at the end of the row about 8” off the ground.
  3. Carefully bring the string in front of the first plant next to the stake, then behind the second plant.
  4. Pull the string tight and loop it around the next stake once.
  5. Proceed to the next set of plants, repeating steps 4 and 5, keeping the string parallel to the ground
  6. Return to the starting end, tie off and then cut your twine. You are now ready for your next row(s).

This week we have been in OVER drive, trying to keep up with everything and to get everything into the ground– spending long nights in the garden with headlamps on!!

night planting

It really is looking great though (way better than last year).