Grow your garden up!

This week in anticipation of putting in the warm weather crops I was thinking of creative ways to grow some of the vegetables. As I have a pretty good understanding of personalities of most of the vegetables that I've grown over the years I can anticipate what their needs are spatially. In an effort to bring more whimsy and creativity to the garden,I had a few brain storms!

So, one day early in the spring while visting my brother's house (he has a garden from The Front Yard Farmer that I tend), I saw that he had just trimmed his Corkscrew Willow and the limbs were in the street waiting for removal. I chose about 20 of the discarded limbs, ranging from 6'-7'long and and cut back any side branches off the main limb and left them to dry out for about 4 weeks. Anyone who is familiar with Corkscrew Willow knows that poking a cut limb in the dirt is all you have to do to start a new tree, I don't even think you have to water it. They are super hardy and fast growing.

My idea was to use the willow branches for growing cucumbers. I took about 6 branches that were relatively straight at the bottom and gradually curled towards the top! I joined them together in a tee-pee fashion and zip-tied them about 2/3's of the way from the top. I'll plant my cuc's at the bottom and they will have a work their way to the top. It looks very cool!

At Steve's garden I wanted something creative for his cucumbers as well. I described to him that I wanted to somehow utilize the existing fence which was about 2 1/2 feet from the edge of the raised bed box, with a mulched walkway in between. Somehow I wanted to have a trellis that had its foundation in the bed and arched onto the fence, bridging the cucumbers over the walk way without blocking the walkway.

I planted the seed, so to speak with Steve and then had to leave for a few hours. Upon my return a few hours later he had almost finished his new design. Steve is the kind of guy who saves 'stuff' just because one never knows, it might come in handy one day. In an ah-ha moment it came to him that those old tents up in the attic that had'nt been camping in many moons had the kind of flexible tent poles that would surely do the trick. You know the poles that are joined by a piece of elastic on the inside which makes them able to flex into an arch???? He took 2 of them, spaced about 24" apart, poked them into the soil of the bed and arched them over to the fence, then laid a piece of wire coated fencing over the poles and attached it with tie wire and VOILA!!!! a trellis for our cucumbers, and it was tall enough for him to walk under without ducking (over 6.5 feet high).

Thats the dirt! I'll keep you posted on the progress of the vertical growers!

In the green,

Wendy