All fall down

This post has nothing at all to do with the previous one, except perhaps for the inclusion of peas. We have quite a lot of peas at the moment; I may be slightly preoccupied with them.

There are quite a lot of plants that are usually offered support by gardeners. I don't mean a shoulder to cry on or encouragement to buck their ideas up, though these may be offered too, I mean canes and bits of string and suchlike. I have been observing some of these plants closely this year, and have come to the following conclusions:

Some of them, including peas and cucumbers, have no interest in standing up on their own, and actively seek out support. You really can't get away without the bits of string for these plants.

A cucumber plant seeking support. The clue is the tendrils.

There are other plants, including broad beans and tomatoes, that show every sign of falling over deliberately. They start out growing vertically, but as the fruit/pods form, they take a more horizontal approach. I used to think this was because we'd bred plants with larger and larger fruit, until the plants could no longer stand the weight of them, but looking at the plants in my garden, that theory just doesn't hold up. The key point here is that the stems aren't floppy and collapsing; they're just as firm as they ever were, but heading in a different direction.

Tomato plants going over there, if you don't mind.

It's my belief that this is a strategy on the part of the plant to get its seeds as far away from the parent plant as possible. Working on this theory, I haven't bothered to support these plants (it's not just laziness, honest!) The main disadvantage is that it's a bit more difficult to find the crop when it comes to harvesting. In addition, bean pods sitting on the wet ground are a bit more likely to go mouldy than those held up in the air, but I haven't had much mould damage. We'll see how it goes with the tomatoes, but for the time being, I'm letting them spread themselves around, if that's what they want to do.