String 'em up

Despite the best efforts of the birds, as noted in the last post, the time has come to start putting twine up for further climbing. Hopefully the birds have been rendered less lethal now that the tomato cages have been cable-tied. I've now put some twine between the tops of the cages and the tops of the shepherd hooks:

With any luck you can see three lengths of green twine. I will attach more as it becomes necessary. All three plants have gotten to this stage. Here's the Columbus:

Which also wins the prize for being the bushiest:

All four verticals will at some point need twine over to the hooks. The Cascade is next bushiest:

With two of the verticals being used to great effect. It also seems to have been the quickest to recover from being decapitated by our avian visitors:

There are two new shoots visible growing out of the highest part possible. There's also some great secondary growth further down:

The Willamette, however, clearly has a very different strategy to the others. While it has put some effort into secondary growth at the top:

It's pretty paltry compared to what it's done lower down:

The Willamette seems to be very much more single minded in its efforts to climb. This is reflected in it being the least bushy of them (I'm discounting the Galena completely at this point):

This particular strategy may well prove its undoing if there are any further threats, like bird decapitation. Right now the Columbus is very much looking like the most successful of the lot. It's only just started getting hot here so there's obviously a long way to go yet.