It is acknowledged that vine crops such as tomatoes and peppers can sprawl on the ground and then have some potential problems. Luckily, the best solution for growers to deal with these sprawling vines is simple: tying the vines up to trellises and adopting plastic zip ties or old T-shirts to keep the vine in space. These T-shirts should be torn into pieces. However, practices mentioned above do make sense in some ways, though, tearing clothes for training vines are definitely neither sustainable nor eco-friendly. We lose our T-shirts forever and those clothes cannot be re-used for cultivating new crops in the next year. Few people can always have new clothes ready to be tore each year. Considering income inequality in society nowadays, it is better to treat old clothes in some other ways, such as donating to charities.

To solve the vine problems, some small plastic clips are created. These clips, sometimes called tomato clips or vine clips, are capable of holding the two halves of the crops, especially useful for grafting plants producing buds. The clips can be large or small. The large plastic tomato clips suit for train vine crops over tomato cages, poles and fence posts. They are reusable and cost-effective. With these clips, our money and labor are saved while we can spend more time taking care of other crops.

In the following passages, let us see how we make plastic vine clips!
 

 

First, we should get some tools: an old garden hose, work gloves, measuring tape and a craft knife or box cutter. 

Second, we need to wear heavy-duty gloves and then cut the garden hose into pieces at the average length of 1 inch. 
The gloves are capable of protecting ourselves from being damaged by the slipping tools when we cut the hose. The old hose without reinforcing threads would be a good choice for us since less strength are required.

Finally, let's cut a slit in each piece of hose vertically.
In the final step to change the hose into "clips", we need to be careful to just slit the hose instead of split it. After we slit these hose pieces, they seem to look like plastic clips in the shape of letter C.

How we use these plastic clips to hold the vines?
Through a series of hand-made processes, we get some simple "clips". Since they are changed to be used as clips, now we can use them to hold the vines and supporting structures together in the similar way to we use the real plastic tomato clips. Yes, you can recognize them as an original version of clips. The only difference is that the slit of the hose piece is more difficult to open.

The clips need to be attached to the vines every 12 inches at least when we try to fasten the vines to the supporting structures. We can use them as much as we can until making sure the crop is secured by the plastic clips and supported by the structures.

These vine clips are reusable and economical. After the harvest season, we are able to remove them from the supporting structures. And then, for the next year, we need to wash them with antibacterial soap in hot water and dry them in the well-ventilated space before storing.

Here is the way we make our own economical and eco-friendly plastic vine clips. The processes are quite simple and easy. However, these home-made vine clips are unsuitable for the grower who cultivate crops in a large space. Buying tomato clips in bulk is more worthwhile.

Make your own tomato clips and tie up your vine crops today!