Beginner Gardening: pole beans, 0 by RickCorey_WA

RickCorey_WA wrote:
For snow, peas, I made a pup-tent-shape framework with 5 poles: 4 legs and one long backbone.
That could work for pole beans if you made it tall enoguh. Beans could grow up each leg of each "W".

I make a bipod by lashing two poles together at the top. I like waxed twine for lashing.
I make a second bipod.
Spread their legs apart and push their feet into the soil, so the tops are as far apart as the long pole.
Drop the long pole on top of the tripods so the forks basically support the weight of the pole.
Lash the pole to the bipods so they don't flop over.

Then I run two flimsy poles from one bipod to the other, a few inches above ground level - call these footers.
Then I weave light cotton twine from the top pole to a footer, like many "W"s. WWWWWWWW.
Then make more "W"s on the other side.

I also weave back and forth from footer to footer, so snow peas in the middle of the tentg have something to grab as they climb toward the "wall of Ws".

You can't see much here, just an overgrown mess after I added more strings to capture random floppy vines.
I'll see if I can find a shot of the poleds and strings before the peas grew.

Now I have a fussy neighbor who loves to make trouble. I'm sure she would wait until the peas were half-grown and then get park management to demand I take it down. I'll have to find something "more sightly".

This message was edited May 29, 2012 3:51 PM