We are so happy with the netting we installed for our tomatoes this year. The name of the product is Hortonova. We ordered it from Johnnys Seeds and it has been so easy to work with for not only tomatoes but also our cucumbers. Last year we used tomato cages and strips of cotton knit fabric to tie up our tall heirloom tomatoes. To our surprise, a black widow spider made her nest in the folds of the cotton tie material! After this finding,  we were convinced we needed to find a new solution for our tomato crop for the 2017 garden.

Another new experiment is using growing bags over our grapes and tomatoes. We covered some of our grape clusters with these bags in April when the grapes were just beginning to form. We purchased these bags from the nice folks at startbagging.com. These bags are reasonably priced and quick and easy to cover your sensitive fruit. Since we’d rather not share with the birds, we are happy to give this a try to see how it works. As you can see in the below photo, we bagged some clusters of grapes and not other clusters to watch the results.

It is the beginning of June and we are just beginning to see the hint of pink grapes forming in the bags. Exciting!