Yesterday Sido and I got an early start back out in the garden bed we have been working on. In the "creepers and climbers" bed… We scavenged all the bamboo we could find from old trelisses that had fallen into disrepair or were no longer in use after last season and reworked these bits and pieces into 2 nice trellises, one for climbing beans and one for cucumbers. For the beans we used simple uprights and one cross beam and a couple of triangluated pieces, then strung it across with string up the height of the trellis for climbing.

sido in the garden

sido with the bean trellis 

For the cucumbers we built an angled trellis so the cucumber vines can climb up the trellis (again, strung across with string) and the fruit can hang down on the other side of the trellis. We made it so that it was 2 sided, the vines can grow up both sides of the trellis, hang down in between.

 

sido and i with the bean trellis 

I’m chuffed with these structures, and the bed is really starting to take shape, with asian greens, lettuces, zuchinnis, cucumbers, climbing beans, onions, strawberries, tomatoes…

trellises

cucumber trellis in the foreground, beans in the background, tomatos in the middle 

trellises

beans in the foreground, cucumbers in the background 

After we finished the trellises we moved down to the pigpen and fenced the top half in order to protect the space, so we can cultivate it. It is a pumpkin/tomato jungle at the moment, and I shall plant some watermelons today. There’s a tamarillo tree in there which is struggling, so it might get a go ahead with less animal activity around it. I’ll also plant the bananas and maybe another berry tree in there.

I should be posting these journal entries and pics on myfolia.com, a kind of myspace for plants! I’ve joined, as has my friend and mutual online gardening fan glittertrash (this is her myfolia link. See the sidebar for her personal blog), but I’m yet to post decent content. Too busy with the backyard blog! Anyway myfolia.com looks fabulous. It’s in beta mode at the moment, so lots of people testing it out. An incredible user-driven resource.

corn bed

this garden bed is planted with corn, spinach, water chestnuts, beets, rhubarb, some herbs, tomatoes, onions, celery (for seed), and some good bug mix! more planting to be done here… 

I love farm technology. For fencing we use these great little ratchet gadgets which tighten the top wire of the fence in order to then tie off the chicken wire to it. I’ll post a pic..

 

We then drove Sido home to the Permaforest Trust, out by the Border Ranges in Barker’s Vale. Lovely lovely land, but unfortunately we didn’t get a chance in the bucketing rain to see much of the gardens, just a glimpse of the kitchen gardens, looking very bountiful, very ordered, very lovely with some raised beds, some squash (?) in a tent to prevent cross pollination with the pumpkins (I think I got that right) and a visit to the wee spot (a bucket full of wee… mmm…)! They collect their wee and watered down, use it as a highly nitrogenous compost tea on their fruit trees. I was very keen to see their banana circles and their kitchen gardens. We’ll have to make another visit soon.We came away with warm dandelion coffee and chocolate and carrot cake in our bellies.

As I write this the sun has just come out, for the first time in way over a week. It has been somewhat madness-inducing, the endlessness of the rain, but I shall never speak ill of the rain, for as soon as the sun comes out it feels like it might never rain again! Anyway, I shall do some more planting this afternoon, while the ground is wet and the sun coaxes new life out of the sodden earth.

Loving you. Muddygrrl x