The stuff, it (still) owns you

[rebeccmeister]

I had ambitions for the weekend. Not all of them were realized. One was this: I have a one of those two-burner Coleman Duel Fuel stoves, but it has had unidentifiable issues the last two times I've gone to use it. So I did what one does and poked around online to look for instructions on how to take one apart and clean it.

On Saturday, I cleaned out the generator, and it seemed like the pump assembly is doing just fine with respect to generating and maintaining pressure. After all that failed to resolve the problem, on Sunday I also pulled off the manifold, soaked it in soapy water for a while, rinsed, and then left it out to dry.

I hope it works when I get to test it again this evening.

Also, a question: I got a pair of 10-foot wooden stakes, which I want to use as tomato supports. Then I learned that the soil into which I want to drive the stakes is very hard and rocky. Do any of you know much about techniques for sinking large wooden stakes into that kind of soil?

Comments

[randomdreams]

If you want a two meter long one for about $5, I know where to get one. Or fifteen.
well hey look I even took a picture.

[rebeccmeister]

So I discovered that the Amazonia sells digging rods. Although I'm tremendously curious to know how such items would be packaged and shipped, I wound up forgoing that in favor of supporting the local hardware store. :^)

[randomdreams]

I will say, having tried both, that a post driver is easier for me than a digging rod for putting in supports for tomatoes and such. Some of my supports are aluminum extrusion from a disassembled shower door and steel tubing from broom handles after the broom itself failed.

[rebeccmeister]

I could understand the post driver being easier, although I don't think it would have worked with the posts I had already purchased (see photos in my subsequent post.

This particular set of tomato plants is going to try and be about 8 feet tall, I reckon, so I wanted to REALLY get vertical with 'em.

I'm glad I only tried to dig 2 holes with the digging rod, for now. :^)

[randomdreams]

My ex-coworker built massive, massive piles of tomatoes. He ended up making his own cages with fencing material: welded wire rectangles just large enough to fit your hand through the holes. He'd make a somewhat over a meter in diameter round thing and stake that to the ground, and once the tomato had grown up to about a meter high, the height of that fence section, he'd stack another on top. I think he ended up pollarding them at a bit over 2 meters because he physically couldn't safely get to tomatoes growing higher than that. Thankfully mine haven't ever grown that tall.

[rebeccmeister]

Hmm, that does sound like a nice long-term tomato management strategy. I've seen similar things. It sort of boggles the mind that there aren't more readymade commercial designs for us folks who have crazy big tomato plants.

[randomdreams]

The coolest setup I saw was in a greenhouse in Montana, where they had strings running from the ground up to the apex, that they trained the tomatoes up, and ladders on rollers so they could reach the whole 3 meter height.