Recently, Home Sweet Home interviewed Betty Adelman, owner of Heritage Flower Farm in Mukwonago, Wisconsin, about the care, nurturing, and support for outdoor vining plants. According to Betty, vining plants with tendrils grab onto something like a chain link fence or other fencing and generally need no assistance. With twining plants, the vine itself will encircle something, for example, a tree trunk. Betty shares her secret for vining plants that don’t have tendrils or naturally twine explaining, “Those that don’t have anything and need a lot of help, for those, what I do is take some chicken wire and just make sure the chicken wire can stand up and then they don’t catch on anything, but this gives them nowhere else to go but up.” She offers clematis as an example of a vining plant that has some varieties that have tendrils and some that do not. There are many different varieties of clematis. Some species only grow to a height of two feet. Although many will recommend planting vining plants by spring, Betty asserts you can plant them in summer with the following caveat: “If you’re going to plant them in the middle of the summer, when it’s hot, you want to be very careful to water them well, regularly, and put mulch (wood chips) on them.” Outdoor Vining Plants
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