Still Using Raffia to Support your Crops?
Trellising vegetables with raffia increases the risk of diseases spreading throughout your fields
The old agricultural raffia method of plant tutoring or plant training has been proven to be infective and inefficient, due to the high labor costs, the fragility of a hand woven plant support system (all it needs –as in the picture below– is for one accidental cut of one of the threads for the whole wall to collapse). A plant support system made out of twine requires many man hours to be installed, and it only lasts a crop cycle.
Its creases and folds existing in the twists of the twine will provide refuge for pathogens and insects, so fumigating costs for your crop will increase. On the contrary using a proven horticulture net like HORTOMALLAS®, guarantees a faster installation
(approximately 1/4th of the time required with twine) and the possibility of re-using the same netting many times over. Also in many cases tutoring with this older method requires plants to be trained manually, which increases the possibility of mechanically spread diseases as the hands of the workers can become the vectors of pathogens.
Advantages of HORTOMALLAS® trellis netting over Raffia Twine
Clearly, besides 1) the time saved in installing HORTOMALLAS® vs. what it takes to weave the trellis with raffia twine, and 2) the phytosanitary advantages of having an environment where diseases cannot be easily propagated by contact (as there is a reduced need for manual training of the plants) 3) the cost factor since HORTOMALLAS® can be reused many times over or 4) by the increased production in fruits thanks to a reduced plant mechanical stress… the clear advantage is physical: plants grow better on an extended trellis net rather than on a single twine.
Plants will find ways to attach to the multiple meshes HORTOMALLAS® offers as support and extend fully over the whole surface rather than forcing the whole plant to compete for a single support. Also when used as greenhouse tutoring or in a high tunnel raffia will require a lot more labor than HORTOMALLAS®: and with the daily manipulation of the plant comes an in creased exposure to diseases and loss of production.
