Monthly Archives: February 2009

Building A Better Bean Trellis

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It sure is an easy way to build a trellis for beans. You just put a stick horizontally in the top and tie everything together in the joints. You let each of the 10 plants run up each bamboo stick and it will soon look like this:

The problem is that the beans are hanging inside this monster, like in the drawing below, looking in from the side of the bed:

Reaching in, finding the beans and cutting them loose is hard to do. (Having a cat hiding inside the bush pretending you are a bird is also kind of problematic – it will cost you some blood unless you’re wearing gloves ;-) ).

A better way to build a bean trellis is like this: (and this is now seen from the end of the bed)

This will cost you 5 more bamboo sticks and one more hour of building but harvesting beans will be much easier. And the yield will even be a little higher since you’ll be able to grow beans on the horizontal sticks too plus more sun will reach the leaves.

Update 2009-02-28 20:24:

Another drawing seen from the corner of the bed:

(Totally Commodore 64 graphics, I can’t help it ;-) )

The top horizontal sticks with beans are not on the drawing, just to keep it more simple.

Are my drawings making any sense to you? Please let me know in the comments section below.

Update 2010-02-04:

Adele sent me the following two photos of a new beautiful bean trellis that her husband built according to the trellis plans above:

The palm leaves on top of the trellis in the second photo is for shade during midday. The trellis is 3 feet by 12 feet (90 cm x 4 m). Rocks are used instead of planks as sides for the raised bed below, since termites are common in this particular location. Yard beans and pickling cucumbers have been planted – the bush near the end is basil.

Very nice! :-D

Choosing The Right Type Of Composting Box

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Throughout the winter I’ve been looking out the window watching the soil in my raised beds shrink more and more into the ground. Maybe it’s because a lot of horse manure and straw were mixed in last year and are now compacted, or maybe it’s because a big part of the soil has been converted into vegetables which then have been removed and carried inside to the kitchen table, thereby removing mass from the beds, I don’t know. But it looks rather silly with a raised bed missing all the soil above ground level. Only the wooden frame is left. It will soon be time for the frost to leave the soil and time for digging. I’ve already built two raised beds with wooden frames and I’m planning on building three more large ones this spring. I’m going to need soil for all of this, more specifically 6 cubic metres, but I’m a bit picky about what I put into my garden. Who knows what chemicals might be present in the soil you buy in big quantities from a gravel pit. Soil in these quantities are awfully expensive from nurseries. What I would really like to do is to make my own from compost. This way I know exactly what goes into my beds and vegetables.
I have already got three composting boxes each about 1 cubic meter with two of them full, but for this to work out I have realized that I need better boxes. At first I was very delighted with the ones I have now, since they have several advantages:

  • Low weight
  • Easy to assemble
  • Low cost
  • Looks great

That’s all very good – if you put in your organic garden waste and leave it alone for the next ten years, kinda like a local disposal site.
But that’s not what I want to do. I want to be able to begin taking some compost out from the bottom and see what’s going on. Maybe some of it is ready to be put into the raised beds or maybe it needs to take another round in one of the other boxes and wait another year. Maybe the whole heap needs to be turned and mixed with more highly reactive ingredients.
But this is not possible with this kind of construction. If you want to recycle your organic matter in the form of compost in your garden, you’ll need a more flexible construction, which you can open in the front in an easy way. The ones below are better suited for the process of using compost in the garden:

Photo by Collin Anderson.

The type of box you hammer together (in the first picture) is more static by design, which is fine if you just want to temporarily get rid of grass clippings and leaves, and then once every ten years or so drive the whole pile away and start all over. It sure is capable of eating a lot of waste but it’s hopeless if you want to work that waste into usable compost for your kitchen garden.

Are you making your own compost or would you like to try it? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts, questions or experiences.

Give Winter Thoughts to Summer Seed Saving

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Seeds
Photo by dawnzy58.

This is a guest post written by Jenny. Check out her blog at http://seeded.wordpress.com.

“It’s dark, it’s cold, it’s winter, and seed-saving season is over. No reason to think about it for at least another six months. Right?

Wrong. Even if you don’t have bowls of dried seeds around that still haven’t been winnowed, like me, forethought now will make this summer’s seed-saving activities much more efficient and fruitful.

Most seed catalogs have been sent out already, or if you don’t get them, the new year’s listings will be up on websites. Ordering now will get you prompt service and delivery; if you wait until March and April, the seed companies will be deluged with orders and your seeds will take much longer to get to you. So if you can, now’s the time to think about ordering. Likewise, it’s getting close to the time to plan out this year’s garden. Choosing what seeds to buy and, ideally, where in the garden they’ll go, leads directly to your later seed-saving experience.

One key item in choosing your seeds is knowing which types of seed cross and which don’t so you can plan accordingly. If you want to grow two kinds of spinach this year and save seed from both, you’ll need to either let only one go to flower at a time or plan on more effortful methods of seed-saving, such as alternate-day caging. If you want to save ten kinds of lettuce, all you really need to do is write down which one is planted where. (For caution’s sake, you may want to plant them some distance apart, too.) Once you know what your needs are, you can figure out the logistics of how to plant in order to keep your seeds pure within the space of your garden.

Also important in planning for seed-saving is knowing whether you’re buying open-pollinated or hybrid varieties. There’s no reason you can’t save seed from hybrids, but you do need to know that those seeds almost certainly won’t produce plants like their parents. If you want to try breeding a new variety of vegetable, go for it–but if you want to know exactly what you’re getting when you plant those seeds, stick with open-pollinated.

Finally, you’ll want to be prepared to keep records. Saving seeds loses some of its charm when you’ve forgotten which type of heirloom bean you planted and have to mark “Beans – white with brown spots” on every packet you keep or trade. It may not be vital until you start planting, but it’s better to be prepared with a notebook or a spreadsheet rather than having six sheets of scratch paper in your pocket on planting day, scrawled with dirt-smeared notes as you move from bed to bed.

Later in the year there will be the actual planting, the beauty of the plants as they grow and mature, and the anxiety of making sure you actually collect those seeds rather than letting the birds or the ground get them. But a little planning now will make those joys easier to come by–and may help get you through the winter doldrums, too.”