A little inspiration in the garden can make a big difference. Vertical frames for vegetables, like these pyramids or teepees, can take trellising for plants beyond stakes and fences and create features to break up a flat expanse of vegetable beds.
I pinched this idea from an online picture, which unfortunately I have lost track of, but I realised straight away that it was perfect for my next bed. The construction was quick and easy, and utilised the bamboo we have growing. It’s just nine bamboo poles, each a few metres long. They’re bound at the top in two pairs of four with cable ties and pushed only lightly into the prepared bed, each thick end at the corner of a square. The result is surprisingly stable. Then I rested a pole across the apices, which adds to stability and makes a rack for suspending strings.
I planted cucumber in the middle of the bed, and a couple of climbing bean seeds at each pole, with the idea that the beans could get up and away and make a vertical planting while the cucumbers cover the ground, but I’ve also lifted the stronger cucumber runners on the suspended strings.
The cucumbers have done surprisingly well, considering they were planted as Autumn approached, and I have been picking them this last week with plenty more on the way. The beans have been less spectacular, but they are also producing a small crop, and you might be able to see from the photo that one plant has reached the top of the frame. Beans here suffer in the warm wet summer weather, so this planting is intended to produce through Winter.
An unexpected benefit of the structure is that some (apparently fairly big) birds perch on the cross-bar (I see the evidence on the ground below). I’m guessing and hoping that they are owls on the lookout for nocturnal chewers. It’s a reminder that diversity brings benefits; a high perch might bring in birds that lower structures like the perimeter fence don’t suit.