The stems still grow like crazy, but it’s much easier to tie them up to [...]]]> My new method of training vines up the fence has worked pretty well. Here is what the rambling rose looks like in June (see my previous post from February when I had cut back the rose and added garden wire to the fence).

The stems still grow like crazy, but it’s much easier to tie them up to the garden wire instead of adding a new hook for each stem.

I must say that I still won’t plant rambling roses again though. They demand a lot of attention, and those thorns manage to still catch my arm when I’m trying to carefully tie up the stems.

I placed all my gardening tools on the hood [...]]]> I’m trying a different way to train vines up a fence. Previously, I had screwed hooks into the fence and tied rose branches to them as the rose bushes grew. I’m going to try a new vine training strategy that will hopefully save time and look better.

I placed all my gardening tools on the hood of my husband’s car (shhhhh). I have plant ties (I love this little contraption), gardening wire, eye hooks, scissors, pruners, wire cutters (I used my carpet cutters because I couldn’t find my wire cutters), sidewalk chalk, a tape measurer, and a wrench.

I used the tape measurer and my children’s sidewalk chalk to mark where I wanted my eye hooks. Then, I screwed in the eye hooks, using my bare hands and then a wrench to twist them deeper into the wood. I then cut the gardening wire and inserted the ends into the eye hooks. I twisted the gardening wire on each side to secure it.

I pruned the rose bush and used the garden ties to secure the remaining branches.

Teddy helped oversee the project.


I’m also going to try training some of the branches to be ground cover. I used a plant stake to secure one branch to the ground.

This is how this area looks now in February. We’ll see how it turns out throughout the year!