Quote:
Originally Posted by jtjmartin
Bill:
Thanks to your posts, I did start stringing my plants at a pretty good angle. They have had no problem with additional leaning and lowering.
I'm currently using leaf mulch so I'm a little more concerned about disease/insects but probably overly so!
As a side note, I started grafting this year "in case" soil-borne disease became a problem - it is. One of the wilts has taken out 4 non-grafted, non-disease resistant tomato plants this year. Oddly enough, only caged tomatoes have been affected so far - not the lean and lowered.
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You will probably have far more insect problems with leaf mulch than with cypress mulch but there is only one way to find out. Buy a couple of bags and mulch a stretch of your bed with it and see how it compares with the leaf mulch.
Generally my disease problems have been better with the lean and lower single stem method. I think the main reason is that the plants get more light and air flow and have less dense areas where some diseases and pests get going good. Another advantage is that single stem plants are so much easier to spray with fungicide so that all the leaves are sprayed.
Bill