Plant-Supports

The cheapest jute twine from the hardware store works fine for staking a tomato plant. It breaks down by the end of the season, which is exactly what you want for something that goes in the compost pile. But jute is wrong for training a climbing rose up a trellis, wrong for securing heavy melons to a support, and wrong for anything that needs to hold tension for more than a few months. ...

A plant without support is a mess waiting to happen. Tomatoes sprawl across the ground, peonies flop over after one rain, and tall perennials like delphiniums collapse under their own flower heads. Plant supports solve this, but the wrong support for the plant creates more problems than it fixes. A tomato cage built for determinate bush tomatoes will buckle under an indeterminate variety. A bamboo stake that is too short for a peony’s flower head will snap off at ground level. ...