Pergola, containers and Jasmine

Vines can get pretty stupid and not climb where they should, instead reaching out for another thing to climb on when they're wrapped around a perfectly good post that will get them up into the canopy. I take an old cotton T-shirt and rip it into little strips of cloth. When the vine does something stupid, I manually wrap the vine around the post and tie it up with a strip. Once it gets to the top and establishes itself onto the post I can untie the strip of cloth and use it somewhere else. I heard old nylons are supposed to be better but I don't have any of those. :-)

Another technique I'm trying this year is hanging rope down from the pergola's beams and tying it down at the bottom. The vines love the rope since it's much thinner and they seem to want to climb that. All my vines are in containers too and they're strategically placed by the posts so the vines don't have to go far to find something to climb on.