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I didn’t have much outdoor space for growing food this year but I spotted these two self-seeded young trees and got the idea of using them as bean trellises:

It’s a bit difficult the see the bean plants climbing up the stems, but you can tell that there’s a bean plant in there somewhere because the leaves are light green instead of dark green. The bean plant growing on the tree to the left is even harder to spot since this is a purple bean plant variety.

I planted each bean plant in their own clay pot below the trees:

If I hadn’t used the young trees as bean trellises for runner beans they would probably have been cut down, because they were self-seeded. It turns out that as these trees grew taller they actually shielded my small container garden pretty well from the wind, which is important, or else your tomato plants and cucumber plants might easily be ripped apart during a storm.

A close-up picture of one of the stems clearly shows that there’s a bean plant growing on the stem:

And as usual – the bean plant is growing counter-clockwise around the stem or trellis. And no, it’s not related to your geographical location, i.e. if you’re living on the northern or southern hemisphere.

Small green beans have started to form and more flowers are developing so soon I’ll be able to harvest something for the kitchen!

Bamboo sticks can be used for many different things when you have a kitchen garden. I’m using one bamboo stick for each of my tomato plants to hold up the metal cage tomato trellis:

The bamboo sticks run all the way to the bottom of the soil tube inside the self-watering container and stabilizes the whole tomato trellis. These kind of bamboo sticks don’t easily rot which is nice since they can be used for several seasons.

The small tomato plants are tied to the bamboo sticks inside the metal cage to keep them steady in the wind:

I’m living in a rented house at the moment so instead of using screws I bent a couple of cable metal holders to fit over the edge of the rain gutter and attached strings down to the bamboo sticks to keep the tomato trellises steady in the wind:

Normally I use bamboo sticks for bean trellises too but why not use the natural environment for bean trellises if you can. I’ve placed two climbing bean seedlings in pots beneath a couple of wild tree shoots hoping the beans will find their way up these two 2 m tall sticks (6 feet):

There’s a giant corkscrew willow growing near the terrace that I plan to use as bean trellis too. A couple of plastic pots with climbing bean seedlings have been placed on the table below the tree:

I’m just looking forward to some sun, heat and rain now