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Friday, April 6, 2012

Re-purposing the Re-purposed for the Peas

My quickie pea trellis tent.
Roland usually gets creative when constructing trellises for vining veg such as peas. He has dived head first into his lumber scrap stash to retrieve lengths of mahogany and white oak to create monumental structures to hold all sorts of legumes or row cover frames to keep the bugs out. A lot of thought goes into his creations.

So far this year he hasn't had time to do any garden stuff, not to mention that the weather hasn't exactly cooperated, so I devised a trellis myself re-purposing one of the already re-purposed wooden structures. I had Roland construct a cold frame over half of one of the beds, so the cat proofing was no longer needed in that area. Instead of letting it just take up space stored somewhere, I concocted an ad hoc tent for a pea trellis. I simply placed the ends of the frames onto the beds between other cat proofing and angled them over into each other. Voila! Instant pea trellis without having to lift a nail gun. To hold the top together I used the next best fix-it thing on earth to duct tape, zip-ties. I only used 3 ties, one on each end and one in the middle. Done.

In the space below, I can plant veg that can handle shadier conditions. I have some lettuce there now, but I could plant Swiss chard, spinach or radishes. With the cold weather still around, at this point, I'll be happy if the peas germinate soon. Now that I can cross this chore off the honey-do list, Roland only has to finish the tool shed roof, finish the cold frames, replace the front porch, get rid of the dead cars, paint the house, clean out the garage........You get my drift.