Support System

Last week, I noticed that the green beans are putting up runners, already. In the past, I waited too long to put up a support for them, and the runners twisted themselves into thick green ropes before I gave them a "trellis" to climb. This year, I decided to get the jump on them, and so I spent Saturday afternoon cutting bamboo canes and using them to rig up a support system for the beans.

First, I drove tall wooden tomato stakes into the middle of the two rows at about 6 ft. intervals, then I wove a strand of hemp twine up one side of the stakes (looping it around each stake) and back down the other, creating a double strand of twine between each stake. The twine strands need to be fairly taut, but not necessarily guitar-string tight. It'll tighten up in the next step. (Last year, I used bailing wire instead of twine. It made for a really strong support, but was a pain to remove in the fall. Let's cross our fingers and hope that this twine doesn't stretch and sag and let the vines collapse before the season is up.)

The next step is to set the canes. I stuck each cane into the space between the twine strands, and gave it a propellor-like twist before driving it into the ground in front of (not behind) the bean plants. (This is what tightens the string.) I spaced the canes about a foot apart. The result looked something like this:



This is last year's fence, done with metal posts and bailing wire instead of wood and twine. It was guitar-string tight, and strong enough to hold an old, leaky water hose (pierced extra times for good measure) laid down the length of the upright "V" for use as a sprinkler.

I suppose if I wanted to get fancy with it, I could tie strands of twine horizontally between the canes to give the runners a more convenient hold, but the system worked well enough last year without additional strands. Training the runners up canes at one foot intervals created spaces that I could reach into to get at the beans that hung on the inside of the teepee.

I have two rows of running beans (lima) left to stake, but first I must go on another cane-hunting expedition. Fortunately, it appears that the lima beans have not yet considered putting out runners, so I may have a little wiggle room, time-wise.

However, it has rained here all weekend - not a pounding flood, just frequent gentle showers, punctuated with bouts of sunshine. The tomatoes look like they've grown a foot in the past couple of days. So does the grass between them. Though they appear to have just been sitting there, doing nothing, the lima beans may explode with runners in the next few days.

Thus, on the gardening agenda this week is to (1) set more wooden stakes and create another trellis in the lima bean rows, and (2) run the tiller in the tomato patch when the ground dries a little.

Geez...it seems like I just did that!

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