Electric cable as garden plant ties.

You can tie your plant supports with string but it always seems as if you need an extra pair of hands and you can tie your plants up with string but the same applies and you have to be careful not to make the tie too tight.

Let's get familiar with the merits of electric cable.

Ask any electrician for some off cuts or end of rolls of the 3 core 1.5mm or 2.5mm cable used for domestic plug sockets, the kind where the wire is a single strand not the twisted stuff.

Strip the outer sheath of by making a small cut at one end, grab hold of the red and black wires and pull them apart and they will just rip the sheath open. Don't strip off the red and black covering but just cut the wires to length as you go.


The wire is stiff enough that when wrapped around plant supports it is quite up to the job of holding up a row of beans in a strong wind.

Take a couple of turns around the support so the wire won't slip and leave a tail to bend into a hook to loop around plant stems. As the plant grows it is easy to slide it up the support or to open the loop out to allow for the increase in stem size. Quite strong enough to hold up a grape vine.

At the end of the season, unwrap the wire and put it away until next year. The copper inner doesn't rust and the outer sheath lasts almost forever. The black ones you can use where you don't want them to be seen. The red pieces are a lot easier to see so rather than unwinding them from your bean plants just put the wires and plant into the compost and fish them out when the compost is ready to use next season.

Reduce rating 2/10,
Reuse rating 9/10,
Recycle rating 0/10.