Growing Up

There are some people’s gardens where space is of no concern. With lots of acres to grow vegetables and flowers, there is no need to conserve space by having the plants growing up, rather than out. That is not the case in our gardens. Although we do have several gardens, we also have many plants to fit into them. So the solution is to provide the plants with support to grow up, rather than out.

Our greenhouse is eleven feet wide and twenty feet long. There is a four feet wide paver path in the center. Along both sides there is arable (good for growing plants) soil. On one side we have tomato plants growing up, tied to metal stakes. Side shoots (suckers) are trimmed off to keep the plants to a single stem. The extra heat of the greenhouse is conducive to faster growth and better fruit production on the plants. Although tomatoes are commonly called vegetables, botanically speaking, they are actually a fruit, having developed from the ovary of a female flower, and having seeds inside them.

On the other side of the greenhouse I have a netted trellis for the honeydew melon, cantaloup and cucumber plants to climb up. Next to that is a wooden cage to support the ground cherry. It becomes quite a large plant and nearly took over the greenhouse last year so this year I plan on keeping it in bounds with support and judicious pruning.

To the south of the greenhouse is one of our grape vine trellises. Seedless concord and seedless Mars grape vines are supported there. At the end there is a wooden support for a newly planted climbing red rose.

Opposite the greenhouse is the cottage garden next to the shed. There are four clematis plants supported by wooden obelisks. Clematis plants are vining, climbing plants. If left to trail on the ground they do not flower nearly as well as when the are given support to climb on.

Next to the vegetable garden I have constructed (out of bamboo and string) a support for the sweet peas. I started with ten plants but now I am down to seven since the rabbits have eaten three others. Sweet peas are a cool weather crop so, to keep their roots cool I have placed a heavy layer of mulch around them.

Training fruit trees to grow in a horizontal direction, supported by a framework as you see in this picture, is called an espalier. This requires a bit more pruning than usual but the trees are dwarf so it doesn’t take too much time. The tree in the foreground is a Reliance peach and the tree further down the support is a Bartlett pear.

The sandwich board has netting for the Oregon snow pea plants to climb up. They get about five or six feet tall. They have started flowering and in a week or so there will be snow peas to pick for a stir fry.

It is a little hard to see in this picture but there are pole bean plants climbing up this support. The variety is Fortex, a particularly good tasting bean. These plants will begin producing eating size beans in another month or so. They will supplement the bush beans growing in the greenhouse garden.

There is one more support I plan on constructing as soon as I post this blog. The summer squash and zucchini squash plants tend to sprawl as they age and so I will create a cage for each out of 1” X 1” pine I have left over from other projects. All this keeps me off the streets and out of trouble!