$5 Bean Teepee
Unfortunately, we didn’t move the old bean and cucumber trellises with us, and I didn’t have the scrap wood (or the ambition) this year to build something new.
Menard’s sells 10′ PVC Pipes for 97¢. Five of those, plus a bit of hemp twine, makes a really nice bean teepee. I dug each pole 1 foot into the ground to make sure the winds wouldn’t take them down this summer.
The blue hoops are my “melon loops” – also PVC pipe (the flexible kind that comes in a roll). I actually have tomatoes planted under these ones; the melons are in the next two rows over. Six years of wire tomato cages have driven me nuts; I’m hoping that tying the vines to these will be a new solution.
The cucumbers will (hopefully) vine on the two arbors, and also on the decorative little fence I built around the garden this year.
12 Jun 2010 at 6:04 am Permalink
Thanks for the follow on twitter, and I wish I had seen this idea before I had staked my green beans.
Great site.
Karen
http://www.gardenchick.com/garden-blog
30 Jun 2010 at 7:44 pm Permalink
That is awesome. We have one volunteer pea plant this year, which is arguably doing better than all of the pea plants we planted last year combined. I put a 5′ bamboo pole in the ground, but it has outgrown it. Maybe what I need is a giant PVC teepee!