Tepee Trellis and Snap Dragon Flowers

 Would it not be nice to have a continuous supply of fresh green beans from the garden during the summer? Of course I would like that very much because nothing beats the taste of freshly gathered Green Beans from the garden. They taste so sweet when you cook them as soon as you pick them from the vines. So two weeks after I planted the second batch of Green Beans in the wire trellis, I came out with the idea of sowing more Green Beans in a tepee. We have some reed sticks that were left over from another project and they were just lying around at the back of my brother's house, so I decided to put them to good use by making a tepee trellis for the Green Beans. I gathered about 12 sticks and tied them together at the top by using a rope to form a teepee and then stuck the legs about 1-foot deep into the ground. As you can see in the picture below, there are two teepees on both ends of this raised bed and I sowed some 3-4 seeds of Green Beans around each stick.

I already harvested the Sweet Peas, the lettuce as well as the Pak-Choi that were planted in this same bed except for these Carrots because it takes about 5 months before they mature. After I harvested all the crops, the raised bed looked empty. I have always wanted to plant some Snap Dragon flowers but the plant section in the mall had nothing to sell at that time. So I visited my friend at the Baguio City Orchidarium and she didn't have any of these to sell as well. I was lucky because I found some seedlings that were for sale right next to my friend's stall and I bought some. I planted these flowers right next to the Carrots and after a couple of weeks, they bloomed! It was a pretty sight to look at and I am amazed at the life span of these flowers. They really lasted a long time that I decided to plant these again next season. I will be keeping the seeds once the flowers are spent and dried so I could sow them by next planting season and I need not buy the seedlings again.  I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed planting them.

Growing Celery From Seeds

The seeds of the Celery plant are very tiny. I had a bottle of Celery seeds in my pantry because I was using this before in making my bottled Green Tomato pickles. I thought that perhaps I could use the seeds to grow my own celery. So I took a spoonful of seeds and put them in a covered bottle and added some water just to cover the seeds and put the bottle inside the refrigerator for 1 day just to soften them up a little bit. Then I bought a plastic seedling tray and a potting mix from the garden section at SM mall and sowed my seeds thinly in the dish and covered this lightly with more potting soil mix. I took a big basin and placed the seedling tray inside then I poured some water in the basin, just enough to come up to about half the height of the seedling tray. By doing this, the potting soil mix will soak up the water from the bottom and this will prevent what the experts call 'damping off" of the seeds. This method will also prevent the seeds from being dislodged if I were to water them from the top. It took awhile for the seeds to grow and I was getting impatient as usual. Thinking that the celery seeds will not germinate, I took the seedling tray and dumped the whole thing inside a disposable plastic cookie container that I was going to throw out. You see, I wanted to use the seedling tray to sow another kind of seeds and I was running out of seedling trays so why not just dump the whole Celery thing and forget about it. Then one day as I was working in the yard, I noticed the Celery seeds sprouting out from the plastic cookie sheet where I dumped them to. I was really surprised by this and I just decided not to touch them and just let them grow to see what will happen. Then I realized that as they were growing, they were getting too close to each other because they got compacted when I dumped them. So I removed some of the taller ones manually and believe me, that was not easy at all because I was trying so hard to be very careful so as not to damage the roots. Then I planted the one that I pricked into individual black plastic bags and put them in the shade until they are big enough to be transferred to the ground.

Companion Planting

This summer, I tried to practice companion planting by inter planting flowers and herbs in the vegetable garden. The bugs/insects will get attracted to the flowers and will leave the vegetables alone, that is the idea in companion planting. Notice how I sowed my plants in the raised bed on the right side of the walkway in the picture above. French Marigold flowers were first planted around the edge of this raised bed and this was followed by two rows of Arugula greens and then two rows of  Pak Choi, a leafy green vegetables with a thick white bottom. I often use Pak Choi in my cooking whenever I make stir-frys or in making soups. It's really delicious without the bitter taste that one usually gets in Pechay, another green leafy vegetable.   

Even the small holes of the hollow blocks that were used in making the raised beds were planted with small grasses. The root system of these plants goes down deeply and it helps to hold the hollow blocks in place.  In the photo above, you see the French Marigold flowers at the end of this raised bed. That brown triangle structure in the forefront is a home-made welded re-bar tomato cage with one tomato plant inside. In front of the tomato cages are Pack-Choi or Chinese cabbage. Behind this tomato cage is the Sweet Pea trellis. Anyway, to maximize the space and get more produce, I sowed Sweet Peas on both sides of this trellis. Planted next to the front and the back side of the Sweet Peas were lettuce of Lollo Rosso variety. Next to the lettuce facing the walkway, I sowed two rows of  Carrots.

Notice the plants in the small plot under the Green Bean trellis? Those are the Lollo Rosso variety of lettuce that we often use when making a sandwich. I made a walkway around this small plot so I could go around it when I do some weeding on the raised beds. On the left side of the Green Bean trellis is a Zucchini plant.

This is the edge of the garden where I placed the arched trellis for the Green Beans. When I removed the wire mesh fence around the old garden, I left the wire mesh on this side only so I could grow some cucumbers and sweet peas on it. Since these two plants grow in a vertical position, they could use the fence to climb onto as they grow and they could be planted next to each other as well. I also added some Pak-Choi and Petunia flowers in between the Cucumbers and the Sweet Peas.   

 

   

Sweet Pea Trellis

I often use Sweet Peas or Sugar Snap Peas in my stir-fry cooking so I thought about growing my own in the garden instead of buying them in the market. How difficult could it be to raise my own Sweet Peas right? So I looked for whatever materials that I could salvage to use in making my trellis but I could not find anything suitable for my purpose in mind. Then I had this "B-R-I-G-H-T" idea of using an old clothes stand that we have in the house! It is actually the perfect size because it may only be 4 feet wide but it's also 5 feet tall. This is made of 1-inch metal pipe materials with two welded stands and a pipe that goes across the top which holds the stands together. We only use this stand to hang the wet  clothes on hangers or for laundry during the rainy season anyway. So I thought I might as well put it to good use while it is still summer instead of it just laying around in the corner. All I had to do now is to find something that I could put across the width and the height of this structure so the Sweet Peas will have something to climb onto as they grow. Then I thought about the excess 1 x 1 inch wire mesh material that was left over after we built the chicken run and that solved my problem. So, I measured the length and width of the structure and cut the wire mesh according to size and attached this to the stand and Ta-da!  I got a Sweet Pea trellis. That picture below with the square structure is the Sweet Pea trellis and on both sides of it are the tomato cages. Well I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed making the trellis.

Sweet Pea Trellis

Sweet Peas ready for harvest.

Sweet Peas taller than the trellis.

Home-Made Tomato Cages

When I removed the wire fencing on three sides of the backyard garden, I also removed several steel rebars that were used as stakes to hold the wire fence in place. The size of these corrugated rebars are 10 mm and these were cut into 5-feet tall each. I am going to transfer these wire fencing in the new hill garden to ward off the chickens and the dogs from that area. The backyard garden does not really need a fence now because the chickens are already fenced in and we don't have a dog or a cat ( except for the neighbor's cat) so if I should ever decide to make a fence in this backyard garden, I would like to use a picket fence someday.  Anyway, I thought about how best to use these old rebars that I took from the fence. So after my brother finished making the beans and peas trellis, I asked him if he could make me a tomato cage using these old rebars. Since these rebars were already cut at 5-feet tall, they're just the perfect height for a tomato cage. Besides, we have 2 extra pieces of 8 mm corrugated rebars that were not used when they made the outdoor aviary. So with these materials, my brother made 2 pieces of tomato cages that are 5-feet tall. I asked him to make the tomato cages into a triangle design with two sides having rebars going across them at a 1-foot distance from the top while one side is to be left open. I wanted this open side as my access to the plants and I can always use a string on this side to hold the plants as needed.

My DH used to tie the tomatoes on a stick that was placed near the plants using the green garden ties. Sometimes, he would used jute ropes to encircle the plants around the sticks so it looks like a round tomato cage. It's just that we have to take out the ropes once the tomatoes have been gathered and that's too laborious. So now that we have this two pieces of steel tomato cages, it should make the clean up much easier with no hassle. Just pull up the cages once the season is over and it can be stored inside for safe keeping until the next planting season is here.

   

The New Terraced Garden

This is what the garden looks like after I completely overhauled the old garden.  I made use of the sloping terrain to create a terraced garden with raised garden beds. This backyard garden maybe small in size but I like it much better now. By using vertical structures such as the Sweet Peas and Green Beans trellises, these increases the planting space even in a small area. Someday, I would like to put up a white picket fence gate at the entrance to the garden. The smaller potted flowers are Delphiniums while the bigger potted plants are tomato seedlings which were transferred later on in the patio near the entrance to our place. I planted Pak-Choi and Mustard greens in this new raised bed and we enjoyed many delicious fresh organic vegetables out of this garden.

The pictures below were taken from another angle just to show you the relationship between the garden and the rabbitry in the background. The first picture below was taken while standing near the Green Bean trellis while the last picture at the bottom was taken from the doorway of the rabbitry. The sitting area for the guests could be seen in the background from the rabbitry. My 4 nephews and a niece often brings home their friends because they like to show off the rabbitry and the garden. Sometimes, even the elementary or grade school pupils who have heard about our rabbitry would drop by the house after school just to admire the flowers and the gardens including the rabbits. It's a small space really but it is a delight to see other people enjoying the simple scenery. Well, I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I enjoyed writing about my adventures in the garden for the summer.Don't forget to visit my other blogs as well by checking out my profile.

Green Beans Trellis

I went through all the hardware and construction shops in town looking for a cattle panel or a hog panel that I could use for a trellis. Not one of the shops here in city carries this kind of panel. All they had are the 2-inch-hole welded concrete wire. I would have bought two of these to make a trellis but the cost was expensive at 1,500.00 pesos per piece so that would have cost me a total of 3K to make one trellis. One piece of this welded wire is only 4 feet wide and 8 feet long but what I did not like about it is the small holes, just 2 inches square. I could not find any cattle or hog panel so I asked my brother if he could make me one since we already have a welding machine. My DH bought a welding machine last year and this is what my brother and my carpenter used when they made the rabbitry. I asked my brother to make the hole dimensions to be 6 inches wide by 8 inches high. This size of the hole dimension will allow us to reach out for the plants during harvest time. So we bought 5 pieces of gauge # 10 wires and it only costs us 70.00 pesos per piece so that all came to 350.00 pesos all in all.

This summer, I was able to grow 2 crops of green beans in this wire trellis. The first batch of green beans were planted behind the outdoor aviary using the home-made welded wire trellis that my brother made for me. What I like about this trellis is that I could plant on both sides of it and I get to have more produce. This arched trellis is 4-feet wide and 6 feet high on its apex. Since I am short at only 5'2" tall, I could easily walk under the arch whenever I gather the green beans and it's easy to pick them as they would just be hanging over my head. Vertical gardening is really a good way to go in maximizing a small space.I placed both ends of the wire trellis in the center of a 2-feet wide raised bed which is in the corner of the garden where it doesn't make a shadow on the other plants. This corner gets the full afternoon sun from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. I made this raised bed only 2 feet wide because it is near the fence and this allows me to reach out at the back of the trellis to get the beans without stepping into the raised bed.