Garden Canes – New Ideas

I have just returned from my local nursery with a stock of new canes. I must now weed out the poor and damaged canes I have left over from previous seasons.

In Praise of Canes

• 2012 is the year I resolve to support my plants better than ever before.
• Why should Sweetpeas be forced to spend energy on climbing when I can help them with a good cane arrangement.
• Why should runner beans get top heavy and risk being blown sideways.
• Well now my plants should be able to perform with the aid on my new cane, string and net supports.

Too my surprise Amazon now supply or arrange to supply canes in volume via the web – it makes transporting the 7-8 foot ones in my car a thing of the past.

There is one further job I must do. I have a clump of bamboo that would benefit from some aggressive thinning out and I hope to get some 3-4 foot canes from this exercise.
The Hazel has already provided this years crop of stems to use as further supports.

I like the idea of mixing bamboo canes with more twiggy stems as shown in the photograph ‘Bean canes’ by jackhynes CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
I also like the idea of putting two canes across the twin row of canes for extra support and rigidity

100307 Canes by scaglifr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Still the best canes are my Raspberry canes but I have a sweet tooth.