{"id":11672,"date":"2013-05-10T02:00:23","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T09:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=11672"},"modified":"2013-04-17T14:31:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-17T21:31:56","slug":"cedar-stakes-for-gardening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/cedar-stakes-for-gardening\/","title":{"rendered":"Cedar stakes for gardening"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Growing tomatoes in a garden with limited space is a challenge, since the plants get tall, unwieldy and flop all over once the tomatoes start weighing them down. Keeping the plants off the ground is important, too, so your tomatoes aren&#8217;t in the dirt where they rot more easily or get eaten by slugs or snails.  I used to buy tomato cages &#8212; open-ended, circular wire cages\u2014to secure the plants &#8212; but they were never strong enough once the tomato plants got taller than 4 feet. The cages would slowly collapse, taking the plants with them, which was worse than if I hadn&#8217;t used anything.<\/p>\n<p>Last summer I happened upon a simple, yet effective device to keep the tomato jungle under control: the cedar stake. Cedar stakes come in various lengths and can be found at any home-improvement or garden store. They are inexpensive, especially compared to tomato cages. I bought 6-foot stakes, one for each plant, and some stretchy vinyl tie that expands with the growth of plants. I jammed the stakes deep into my raised beds and loosely tied the tomato plants to them. As the plants grew, I would tie up the new growth. The stakes never once threatened to fall over, and even the bushiest, tallest tomato plants stayed in their allotted space.<\/p>\n<p>This year I&#8217;ll be reusing the cedar stakes. They are naturally insect- and rot-resistant, so even though I left them in the ground much longer in the fall than I should have, they are as good as new.<\/p>\n<div class='ctx-module-container ctx_default_placement ctx-clearfix'><\/div><span class=\"ctx-article-root\"><!-- --><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomato cage alternative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11672"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11676,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11672\/revisions\/11676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}