One of the biggest problems I've had this year is the wind. Here in KY we have strong storms with strong winds ! I have moved my pots to a diffrent side of the house, all kinds of tricks. Now I have dug holes in the ground and set my pots down about 8-10 inches below the grounds level. I hope this helps. I was wondering what others are doing to keep the wind from blowing the pots over. I have too many pots to keep moving them.


David    Bowling Green

David,

One thing I did to keep my plants from blowing over is install a rail. Got the idea from a local nursery. The rail also helps keep the drip irrigation poly tubing shaded from the sun on the row without lattice shading.

Thats a really nice setup! Thank you for the tip and picture.

David   Bowling Green

I took bungee cord and wrapped the smaller pots together in bunches.

Some of the plants are so tall. I think I should have never allowed them to grow that tall given the place I was setting the pots, I hope to do some things diffrent next year. I'm learning some great ideas from other growers.

Looks great there Mr Corvette Guy!

I used to grow in containers and had the same problem with the wind, especially when the plants grew tall and when the soil dried out. I ended up weighing down the containers with a couple of bricks or heavy stones on top of the soil. It helped a lot but I still had occassional problems when a strong wind storm passed through.

You know the green stakes you can buy at the store for staking up plants?  Get one two per plant, and run them into the pot and hammer them into the ground, through the base of the pot.  Try to get them at least a foot into the ground.  This should keep them stationary for winds under 40-50mph.  If not, add two more.

david - great looking fig collection 

Thats a really good idea ! I will try that on my taller plants
Thank you

David     Bowling Green

Be careful with the hammer you choose.  Those things are hollow cheap metal inside the green casing and they will bend.  I'm sure if you walk around the hardware store you're bound to find something metal that may work better.  All you need is about 36" worth to get 12"-18" below the earth, 18"-24" above.

Rebar, 3/8' or 1/2" comes in 3 and 4' lengths at Home Depot. It is cheap and should work as well as the green stakes, and is probably cheaper.

I have just done what Jon has suggested, I bought some rebar on Friday. After finding out that the green plastic wrapped hollow tubes were just shy of 3 dollars each, I purchased some rebar from a local home improvement store and even with a 10 dollar delivery charge for 10 twenty foot pieces it worked out to 2.80 each after I cut each twenty foot piece into 3  six and 1/2 foot pieces.  Some of them will be used to support air layers and the other will be used for tomato stakes for the rest of my life.
"gene"

Good idea guys, and to think I have rebar sitting next to my green stake pile ;)

@Gene, if you buy a good self-etching primer and top it off with some rattle can paint (I use Rustoleum hammered finish) you can make rebar go for years without rusting.

Thanks for the paint tip Jason, I hadn't thought of that. Doing them that way my grandkids will be able to use them.
"gene"

I tie all my pots together, along with using stone rock mulch to weigh them down.

my trees would knock down when they were in 3g pot. now they are in 10g pot, i haven't had any issue. if i have more room, i would move my trees to 20g pot.

pete

I bought some of the HD square pots thinking they might be a little more stable.  The storm is moving away now in the northeast but now the wind is picking up and I'm just leaving everything thats down alone until the wind dies down.