The tomato tower we built out of stakes and stubbornness.
Cheap, ugly, holding twelve plants up just fine. The trellis people would not approve. The plants do.
The garden is its own school. Less data, more dirt.
The tomato situation this year was: twelve heirloom plants, no trellis, a budget of about $14, and a partner asking me politely when I was going to "deal with that." So I dealt with it.
Eight wooden stakes from the hardware store. Some leftover jute twine. A bunch of zip-ties because I am not a person of patience. Knot the twine between the stakes, lash the plants in as they grow, repeat every two weeks.
It looks like a 19th-century telegraph line went out of business in our backyard. It's holding up like a champ. The plants are vertical, the air is moving, the fruit will set higher off the soil. Mission accomplished.
Sometimes a homestead is a series of structures that just barely work, held together by the conviction that fancier would be worse.
Field Notes will keep the score honest. When the tower collapses we'll write that one too.