My birthday present from my daughter this year was some help in the garden. We constructed a bamboo trellis for pumpkin vine and a twine corral for sidewalk-side sunflowers. The pumpkin vine has grown beyond the teepee apex and a young pumpkin sits in the apex crotch of bamboo. And, IT’S GROWING! The sunflowers below are, for the most part, contained within the garden twine "fencing" provided by the rectangular-shaped bamboo pole corral. Read on!
Straw Bale Recliner Bed in 2008
The planting bed alongside our driveway is named Straw Bale Recliner Planting Bed, or Straw Bale Recliner, for short. I gave the 20′ x 10′ bed that name because straw bales were used to frame it. To start the bed, 3 feet of adobe soil was removed the entire 200 square feet — many wheel barrow fulls of adobe carted away, some to our back yard, some down the sidewalk to a neighbor looking for clean fill. Then, rice bales (less germination than wheat) were used to make a rectangular shaped box. Some bales were stood on end; that much more organic material to rot in place and make soil and home for decaying straw-loving creatures. Alfalfa straw was used to line the bed – yummy nitrogen-rich straw that would enrich the soon-to-be soil. One side of the rectangle had bales propped up at an angle – that was the “recliner” side. Comfy place to hang out till we started to fill it.
Then the planting hole was filled with yard debris from wherever it could be found, but no ivy, please. Months of adding organics and soil mixes. Months of growing green manure only to chop and drop it in place – pumpkin/squash is my favorite expendable green manure. Such luscious large leaves later lacerated to litherines. (poetic license with a capital L!)Squash for chop-and-drop soil making.
Soil making mix — juicy sugar-laden fresh plants, fallen oak leaves from down the block, hedge trimmings, magnolia limbs, fruit tree harvests, miscellaneous weeds and grasses, last year’s old straw. Mix it, turn it, water it, AND REPEAT. Crop after crop, a labor of love to add organic matter to the soil and encourage soil microbes, soil critters, and even critters that might leave the soil. Hey, who brought this warthog home?!
Apple harvest and squash greens to feed upcoming garlic crop.
Four years of garlic by winter, sunflowers by summer and now we have rich soil. We also have a healthy crop of aphids and other insects enjoying Straw Bale Recliner Bed. Are aphids a problem? Of course not – they are sugar and protein packets stuffed with bacteria. Alive aphids are food to some critters; many insects feast on aphids. Amphibians, reptiles, and birds will feast on those insects. Dead aphids are also food to other critters – insects and soil microbes to the rescue! So, those aphids-abundant (no, not “infested”) squash leaves will be all that more nutritious when churned into the soil.
Aphids contribute to a rich soil's environment.
This year’s sunflower crop is stunning. Would have loved to plant earlier than the first week of July, but such is life. BUT, this year, a pumpkin vine emerges from the bowels of Sunflower Earth and winds its way toward the sky. There are actually two pumpkin vines growing up the two teepee trellises; the left vine is both more substantial and has a larger pumpkin at its end.
Happy sunflowers and a trellis cradled-pumpkin.
For each of the two “chosen” pumpkin vines (one right and one left), the vine was trimmed of off-shoot vines as it climbed up the bamboo trellis.
A pumpkin wedges itself tightly atop the left trellis.
Trimming off competing vines ensured faster and stronger growth up the pole for the chosen vine. The vine was also twirled around the poles and through garden twine to keep it from falling back into the bed. All flowers, both male and female (the females usually have a small pumpkin already starting to grow) were plucked off. No competition, please; we have a pumpkin to grow at the top of this trellis!
A pumpkin grows between trellis poles. The locked-in configuration of the pumpkin will probably keep it from falling to the ground.
Have a great Halloween.
Peace on Earth.
Tony