The problem with growing vining things in buckets comes when they spill over the sides. Many times that can cause the vines to crease really hard where they bend over the edge of the pot especially if it's a tall pot. This also happens a lot when heavily laden tomato vines hang over strands of wire cages. So a couple years ago I bought a cheap foam pool noodle and cut sections of it to slip over the cage edges where vines were crossing them. It worked really well!

This summer I have that Warsaw Pasta squash and a 5'-vine cuke growing in buckets. Yesterday it was time to deploy the foam on the squash and cuke buckets. Earlier this year when the new water heater came there were a few foam tubes in the packing material so you know I grabbed them for future bucket use! Waste not, want not. They were even slit down the side so I didn't have to do that.


I cut them about 3" wide and slipped them over the edges where necessary on both plants. Here's the cuke plant:


Here's the squash plant. Notice the gap between adjacent foam pieces.


I could just see some vine crawling in between foams and breaking. It was just a matter of cutting the foam more narrowly to accommodate the curvature of the bucket. 2" wide was a perfect fit. Wider pieces with gaps on the left, more narrow on the right in the next pic. So I need to remember that the smaller the pot the more narrow I have to cut. And go make those wider pieces on the pot more narrow.


The other day Pickles found pool noodles on sale at Dollar General for 50 cents each! She came home with three. I'm set for a while!

Wow that’s absolutely perfect