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Old December 18, 2010   #52
JackE
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Woodville, Texas
Posts: 520
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Clean-up is sooo much easier - nothing like the cages, where you almost have to pull the cage and the plant up together and then tear it out of the cage piece by piece - and then carry the cages, max four at a time, to a trailer, transport them to the stacking location and spend hours stacking them - only to have them fall over during the winter! Ours are all "half cages" (2-1/2 feet instead of 5 ft) but still a real pain in the neck to store and handle. However, you do get twice as many from a roll of CRW. I'm tempted to give these cages away to home gardeners in the church, but everytime I do that I wind-up needing it later! :-)

With the weave, you pull the stakes first - just drop them to the ground, and then you can pull the twine right out (if you only use two wraps when you weave), leaving no twine behind to wrap-up in machinery later. Baling twine does not degrade. Finally, just gather up the stakes and toss them on the trailer. Be sure to get all the stakes because the discs (or worse, the tiller) will find them in the spring!

And then there was the horrendous weeding problems with the cages, which improved when we started using Devrinol pre-emergent herbicide, but still a hassle. With the weave system, we can mechanically cultivate and lay it to the plants with a half-sweep blade - just like you would lay-by sweet corn.

Jack
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