Walls 'o Water

Since I'm still in the age group of ladies who are birthing babies, I must say that the first time that I heard "Walls o' Water" I thought of pregnancy and bag of waters.  Now, on to the real posting.

I live in Zone 4 which has a very long winter (and when I say long winter, I mean six  months of snow and eighth months of bare, leaf-less trees).  It isn't technically "safe" to plant warm weather crops until Memorial Day.  Any planting of corn, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, and zucchini before Memorial Day is like playing Russian roulette with your plants.  In addition to a very short growing season, we also have a dry climate, a lot of wind, mild summer temperatures, and nightly temperatures in the low 50s.  Seems like an impossible climate to grow tomatoes and peppers in, doesn't it?

I found out about "Walls o' Water" in May of this year.  The gardening guru who introduced me to them said that I could plant tomatoes as early as APRIL 1st with them.  (Just to give you a little perspective on how ridiculous this seemed to me--there was snow three times a week, on average, this April.  Who plants tomato plants in the SNOW?!)  If I didn't know this lady personally and if I didn't know she had tried them with success in Montana, I would not have believed her.  (Mountain man was skeptical anyway!)

At $10 for a three pack, I bought two packages that afternoon and started using them on my tomatoes.  We had daily highs in the upper 50s for most of May, so it was still a good opportunity to try them out.  The tomato plants that started in the Walls 'o Water are almost twice as big as the plants that I set out without the Walls o' Waters.  In fact, I harvested two little roma-size tomatoes yesterday.  In June.  (Again, I wish my warm-weather friends knew how ridiculous this is!)  In addition to keeping the tomatoes warm, it also protects the plants from the crazy wind we have here!

I was told that you can use the Walls o' Water for peppers as well but I haven't tried it yet.  I have 18 tomato plants and 16 pepper plants, so I saved the usage for my tomatoes.  I've also heard that you can use them to protect baby squash and cucumbers.  I tried doing that with a hill of cucumbers will little success.  It may have worked better had I just had one plant in each Wall o' Water.

Another added benefit of the Wall o' Waters is for catching flying bugs.  When I was having a fly problem with my leafy-greens, I found quite a few of the little guys floating around in the Wall 'o Waters.  It was much easier to show the bugs to my bug expert for identification that way rather than trying to catch the little garden-killers without squashing them.

So, there you have it. My whole-hearted endorsement of Walls o' Waters!  Let me know if you decide to use them next year!!



The tomatoes in the front are the first tomatoes that I set out with the Walls 'o Water.  They grew larger than the top of the WoW, so I caged them and moved the WoW to the next row of plants to jumpstart their growth.