Yesterday’s heavy rain has my tall flowers bent over. The stem broke on several. The flimsy flower supports you buy at Home depot are useless. The flowers always jumpout of the hoop. I can’t drive them into my hard ground. The flimsy stakes just bend.
I designed this. In Word, but I made a jpeg with SnagIt
the flowerbed is three to four feet and its in front of my deck. Refer to my diagram. Basically I’m going to put a couple eyehooks in the deck. Three 4ft pieces of rebar (bent like a candy cane, to avoid a deadly trip hazard). Use 1/16" vinyl coated wire rope to make a lasso. A turnbuckle will let me keep it tight.
unfortunately Home Depot doesn’t sell short lengths of 1/16" vinyl coated wire rope. I’d have to buy a 250 ft rolland it’s special order. I’m seriously debating if its worth the cost to buy a roll of this smaller cable.
option 2. is 1/8" vinyl coated wire rope to make a lasso. In a handy 30ft kit for $12.50 Serious overkill for flowers. But it’s the cheaper option. 1/8" clamps and turnbuckles are easier to find too than tiny 1/16"
Finally, the big problem and the reason for this thread. How can I get the nice oval that I drew on paper? I can lay it out on the ground with a water hose. But three rebar posts won’t give me a nice oval. It’s going to be a trapezoid.
I could add maybe one more post. I don’t want more than that. The welding shop is going to charge me dearly to heat this rebar and bend it into a candy cane.
Any ideas to get a nice or sort of nice oval shape?
Wouldn’t stretching out a water hose into a oval do the same thing? That shows me each end point of the oval/ellipse. that’s where I’ll drive my rebar into the ground.
I’m worried that when I wrap my cable from the eye hooks and around the posts it’s not going to be curved edges. There’s five points the cable will be attached.
It’ll end up looking something like this. Hopefully I can position the three posts more accurately by using the water hose as a guide.
I’m stumped. I thought about running the cable through a piece of water hose. But wouldn’t the cable still make this odd jagged shape?
This may be the best that I can do. I just wanted to get some 2nd opinions. Maybe I’m overlooking something.
Ebay has 100 ft coils of 1/16" vinyl coated wire rope for $18. That’s a lot better than a 250 ft roll that I’d never use up in a lifetime.
Seller has the 1/16" clamps too. I could use sleeves (to make the loops on each end) but I’d have to buy a crimper and I need the option to take this loose someday.
I’m not sure there is an answer other than using a dozen attachment points. Which isn’t practical. I don’t want to encircle a three foot flowerbed in that many rebar posts. It really won’t hurt anything if the cable doesn’t make a smooth oval.
It’s like the plot graphs we did after our physic lab experiments. The more data points you have, the smoother the curve.
I did something like this a few years ago with some wooden stakes and small nylon rope. Didn’t work too well. The rope stretched leaving a saggy support for the flowers. The wooden stakes rotted out after a couple summers.
So, this time I’m using rebar and wire rope (aircraft cable). Easy to drive into the ground and it won’t be rusting out for a long, long time. I just have to get the top bent into a candy cane at a welding shop to make it safe from tripping.
I’m thinking the bigger problem won’t be getting the oval shape horizontally, it will be the wire sagging vertically, between the supports. Is the wire stiff enough to maintain its shape, or is it going to look sort of like a suspension bridge?
I’m hoping the wire will be stiff enough. I plan to use a turnbuckle to tighten it up if it stretches. Not real taunt. I need it just tight enough not to sag.
I know the rope I used the last time sagged. It stretched more and more as the months went by. I had it stapled to these wooden stakes and there was no way to tighten it.
Rather than cable, I’d consider using aluminum solid wire. I’ve seen it sold in coils and it’s about 1/8" or 1/4" in diameter. It will hold its shape once formed. I believe I’ve even seen some coated with green semi-transparent plastic. It may be used for clothes lines. Have you checked a gardening center?
Drive something pointy into the ground to make a hole if the ground is that hard. Find (or make) a smaller version of http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_988888_988888 to drive in a one inch rod, pull it out, and your steel candy canes will drop in easily. Use the inch rod to tamp the hole closed around the candy cane.
Got a trailer hitch on the truck? Get a steel/iron pipe you can slip the candy-cane rebar into, drop 1/2 foot of it out, stick the last inch into the trailer hitch’s bolt hole, and push it around with the pipe. No one bends 1/2 rebar hot unless they need a 1/2 inch radius.
Maybe instead of a bend, get a pvc sch40 pipe about 4 inches long, secure a cap to one end, drill a series of holes around the other end, drop that over an unbend non-candy-cane, and you can use the holes to hang variously colored yards and ribbons from the fabric store (or vinyl wire) to hold the plants up.
BTW, any good steel supplier can sell you 3/8 and 1/4 rebar too, as well as non-textured solid round stock, quite cheap, really.
I’ll check and see what solid wire is out there. thanks.
I’ll try bending some rebar myself and see how it goes. The welding shop I use does some ornamental metal work. I’m pretty sure they have bending jigs. But if I can save money and DIY, that’s good too.
