Written by Hortomallas Hortomallas on 23 March, 2016. Posted in bean net, crop netting, cucurbits support, disease control with netting, double wall trellis, eggplant support, flower net, flower support, Gherkin / Cucumber net, Greenhouse trellises, high-wire crops, horticulture netting, humidity and crops, humidity and pathogens, mechanical stress, melon netting, pathogen reduction, pepper trellis, pumpkin and squash trellis, Pumpkin Trellis, raffia comparisons, tomato net, tomato raffia, trellis netting, vegetable support net, zucchini net

Tutoring your crops with net trellis: Why it is so important?

Tutoring your vegetables with net trellis

Tutoring your crops with a net trellis system both in open field and greenhouses has become a fundamental practice nowadays. Crops like cucumber, zucchini, chayote, eggplant, beans and melon are crops that without tutoring tend to crawl to the ground, whereby flowers and fruits will be exposed to steppage and humidity related problems. However in crops where it is so important to harvest the most and best quality of product it is necessary to implement a plant support for harvesting and avoid damages on fruit and flowers. The effects of a poor plant training system are fruit complications such as when crops are not tutored such as curvature and fruit size reduction. Tutoring with a HORTOMALLAS net trellis system is an horticultural tool used to maintain stalks firm and upwards, allowing for the right development for it to produce more efficiently. In this way when tutoring is done we can avoid the plant to bestrew on the soil, which will prevent workers to step on the plant and damaging stalks, leafs and flowers.  However this  it is not the only benefit we may achieve by using trellis netting, as the grower using trellises will also prevent the crop from being in constant contact with humid soil and thus preventing bacteria and fungus formation, allowing better aeration and solar exposition for the leafs. This is a typical example of the influence of strong climatic changes. Heavy raining out season cause damages to the harvests of farmers that grow traditionally without tutoring.   There are different materials and methodologies for tutoring cucumbers like: wooden poles, metal poles, polypropylene raffia, wire, metal wire netting, polypropylene netting among others. As for tutoring and training cucumbers we may use one of several different methods. Some of them are tTo tie the plant to wooden or metal poles, another one is to make an “Inverted V” with wooden poles that match on the top of another “Inverted V “(This is known as chapel) On the other side we find net trellis  systems like the HORTOMALLAS that is very practical, resistant and easy to handle, reducing manpower costs and reducing hand to plant contagion (known as mechanical spreading of pathogens).   In greenhouses, tutoring can be installed directly to the metal structures both vertically and horizontally allowing optimal plant development, with better aeration, solar exposition and reducing fungus incidence.   Regardless of the method or materials used, it is of vital importance to realize that tutoring crops it is not a practice exclusive to large  vegetable farms. On the contrary, small and medium producers may find that tutoring increases the yield of their land parcels allowing for better and greater development for both fruits and plants. This will turn into better income for farmers, enabling them the possibility to keep growing their production activities.