Trellis full of peas

The peas have grown tall and started producing pods. There should be enough sugar snap and snow peas to have a stir fry and also freeze some for later.

Pea tendrils holding onto the trellis

My peas have gradually found the trellises and begun climbing them.  I was expecting to pick peas on May 15th, so we’ll see if that dream comes true.

The Peas haven’t reached the trellis yet

This early spring probably allowed the peas to germinate much faster than normal, but they still have quite a bit of growing to reach the bottom of the trellis that I want them to grow on.  Sunday and Monday will have temperatures as high as 90 F, so that ought to confuse these cold-loving plants. […]

2011 Garden Trellis Design for my Raised Beds

I have tried many types of trellis in my garden…more than I care to count. This year is no exception. I am building semi-permanent trellises on 5 of my raised beds.  It might be easier to let the pictures do the talking: A little over a week ago I got out in the really nice […]

One reason NOT to trellis melons and pumpkins

I have done my share of trellising projects in my garden over the last few years.  Today I would like to share with you one good reason NOT to trellis the bigger vines of melon, pumpkin, squash and gourds. In the photo above, I have circled in yellow the area where my vines left their […]

This year’s tomato trellises

Last year I had all sorts of trouble with my fancy tomato trellises falling down on me. This year I kept it simple. Each plant has one center pole. Three poles are tied together into a tripod, and four tripods are joined together at the top. The result is very sturdy and uses only sticks […]

Tomato Trellises 2009

I built these interesting, semi-obelisk tomato trellises this year to try to give the tomato plants more head room at the top versus last year’s teepee design.  I’ll probably change them next year to give them a slightly wider footprint.

Cucumbers growing on a trellis

The cucumbers are growing up the trellis I made from sticks that fell into my back yard this March and April.  I just laid them out on the ground in an arrangement that worked, tied them together with twine and stuck them in the ground. This is actually (like most of the photos I post) […]

Cucumbers started late in 2012

An experiment that ended up happening this year was to start cucumbers from seed outdoors in late May instead of early May. When I read what I just wrote it just sounds like no big deal…a couple weeks difference…”so what?”, right? Well, it has me nervous because by this date I usually have fruit set […]

Shelling Peas in 2012

I got this small collection of shelled peas from an 8 foot row.  And this was a good year with an early spring. It turned out that I planted a bush variety pea, so they didn’t need to grow on the tree house trellis where I planted them.  Either peas just don’t grow well in […]