Friday, April 27, 2012

Almost Done!

Eric has been Mr. Garden Studmuffin all this week. (Plus he's either made me tea or met me with coffee every day this week, and gave me a really helpful leg and back rub one night because I started a "boot camp" type fitness program that felt very intimidating. Poor guy is getting up at O'dark-thirty in the mornings, participant or not.)

The thing I'm blogging about, though, even though it's only one thing, was part of getting the yard really ready for the tour. I'm trying to clean up, spruce up, and fill empty spots. So I bought some plants that I might have waited and grown from seed, or those that died in their pots quickly or birds ate or something.

Yesterday I put the climbing winter squashes in half of the spinach bed. This half wasn't intensively planted, and besides, some of the other spinach is bolting -- it's not going to last long. The butternuts I planted never came up, so I grabbed a couple of them at the nursery, plus a Kuri Red squash and a Small Sugar pumpkin.

But half the spinach bed isn't too big, right? What to do? Denise and Kevin had given me a bunch of huge bamboo from their yard, and Eric was a boy scout, so. . .
 

It's probably strong enough for a person to climb on, but the twine wouldn't hold. Certainly it's sturdy enough to hold pounds and pounds of squash, plus it's going to store easily or break down easily. Darn thing has to be 12-13' tall, though.


I'm going to use it as a place to put my "growing vertically adds space" sign for the tour on Sunday.

7 comments:

Daphne Gould said...

it looks great. I so love bamboo.

Annie*s Granny said...

But....but....but....if I grew my butternut vertically, it wouldn't hide that big patch of Bermuda Grass that is sprouting all around it! Those vines are good for something ;-)

Boy, did I give my husband a talking to after reading what Eric did for you. Didn't phase him a bit :-(

Stefaneener said...

Daphne, it cracks me up that it's grass.

AG, I am on an anti-Bermudagrass crusade, despite the futility of it. I don't want to give it a nice hiding place. The mint bed is bad enough.
Eric is sort of an exception. I told one of the single women at boot camp on Friday morning, "It's always like this." Maybe she'll look more favorably on marriage now.

Prairie Cat said...

How neat! My uncle has some bamboo that is growing in his yard, and once I manage to go visit, I am going to help him 'clear' it... and then keep all of the cut and dried stuff to use in my garden. It is so useful!

Erin said...

great trellis, I love bamboo! My hubby will make anything I dream up too, even if he doesn't understand LOL - I just keep telling him, just do like I say and you'll get it once your done hahahaha!

Rhonda Gales said...

I'm loving the trellis. Wish I had a bamboo stash. That would make a great squash trellis.

Everyday-Vegetables said...

Never thought of using bamboo. Great idea as it very strong. We are little later in our season and will not be able to plant our vines until the end of May.