Over the weekend I finally had a chance to fix two mistakes I made over five years ago. The mistakes relate to a climber that grows in the BBQ area. This climber is quite spectacular when it flowers and if properly supported it could be even better. When we moved into the house the climber was barely at the top of the post that supports the pergola. To help support it I tied four pieces of wire half the length of the pergola (about 8 metres). Over the coming years I trained the climber along the wire by wrapping it around the wire. So did you spot my errors. The first was that I used a fine wire that was unable to support the current weight of the climber. The second was training the climber around the wire. A strategy that has been slowly strangling the climber the further along the wire it went.
To overcome the first problem I replaced what remains of the original wire with a thicker wire (3mm diameter) commonly used to support shade cloth. To overcome the second problem I am using a soft nylon tie that will expand as the climber grows and thickens.
