The Big Picture

This is the most prolific part of the garden. The picture is a little embarrassing, due to the weeds that are, well, everywhere. But all the plants seem to be getting plenty of water, thriving actually, and I don't have 8 hours a day to spend on the garden, so there you have it. In the foreground are the summer squashes (zucchini in the lower left). Behind that is a row of cucumbers, but you can't see them. Behind that you can see bell peppers, and behind those are the tomatoes. I've used a modified version of the Florida weave to trellis them. Look it up! It works very well.

The first row of tomatoes has determinate varieties (meaning they have a pre-determined size they will grow, i.e. they will stay short). They are trellised using shorter wooden stakes (I think they are 4' stakes stuck about a foot into the ground). The two rows behind are indeterminate, meaning they will climb up to the sky if you give them enough time and a tall trellis. Those are staked with 6' metal rods, the kind that you can get at the garden store and are coated in green plastic. I also have metal T-posts at the ends of each row for reinforcement, so the whole thing doesn't fall over.

Pole Beans

To support my pole beans I chose 6-foot-long bamboo poles and lashed them together with twine. I could easily have chosen 8 foot poles but a) there's a significant cost jump in that extra two feet and b) even though I'm tall I don't relish the thought of picking beans overhead.

So now my supports are standing in slightly raised hills about 6" high, with 4 beans planted around the base of each. The poles are slender enough that the wind should not catch them while they are bare, and by the time the plants are big enough to pose a problem I hope they will also be sturdy enough to keep the supports grounded.

You can see I didn't water the freshly planted beans much. It's supposed to rain tonight so this was just to firm up the soil in the meantime. I also have six more hills to prep and plant... as soon as I get some more poles!

Pea Trellis

The peas I'll be growing this year are sugar snap peas, a variety that grows on tall vines and does need support. I've seen some nice looking trellises made with a variety of reclaimed materials, but I'm really not crazy about untangling dried-out-vines from the pieces I want to keep for next year. So I decided to use metal posts and twine - the posts should last a few years, and the twine can simply be cut away and tossed in the compost with the vines after they're finished.

The raised row on the left is where the peas will be sown. It's 30 feet long, and I've marked with wooden stakes where the posts will go, roughly six feet apart.

These are five-foot-long light duty T-posts, they cost me $3.29 each and have holes in the sides which are perfect for feeding twine through. After being hammered a foot into the ground, of course, they are now four-foot posts. That's probably not tall enough, as these vines may grow six feet or more, but this was what was in stock and I was anxious to make some progress in the garden. So we'll see how well it works.

Once the posts were firmly in place I threaded twine through the holes to make a ladder, tying it a few times at the ends so that, if it breaks and I need to re-string it, hopefully the peas won't all fall down. The vines do support themselves for six inches or more, so the twine doesn't have to be too tightly spaced. It does need to be fairly taut, though, and it needs to be strong twine. This isn't.

I originally intended to use baling twine, which we have in copious amounts for haying, to weave through the the posts, but I saw a roll of "tomato twine" on the shelf at the store and figured I would try it out. I should've stuck to my plan. The stuff frays ridiculously easily, and I can practically rip it apart by hand. So I plan to double up the job with sisal baling twine before the peas grow very tall.