It's difficult to show the evolution of the garden because of its
size (80'X 100'). Pictures taken to capture the whole garden just blur
into a lot of undistinguished greenery and its easy to lose scale.
Here's a short photo essay that shows the progress of one aspect of the
garden; the pole-bean tipi that we made and planted in late May.
We
began by prepping the soil, fluffing it up with a spade-fork and
digging in rabbit manure. Beans don't need a lot of fertilization as
they are able to "fix" nitrogen from the air. We mounded the soil into a
ring and lay down a heavy bed of straw in the middle (6" thick). Next
we chose three stout, straight bamboo poles and tied a knot around them
about six feet from the ground. You want to place your knot lower than
the height of your shortest other poles as they need to be able to lay
in the crotches formed by this tripod. Spread the three tied poles into a
tripod with the legs equal distance apart. Lay the other poles in the
spaces between these main poles so that you eventually end up with your
poles 4-5 inches apart at the bottom. Work your way in a spiral laying a
new pole between these original 3 poles in a circular direction. Be
sure to leave space for a door. Later in the summer, the tipi provides
excellent shade and it's easiest to harvest the beans from within.
Here's the tipi's top after all the poles have been placed:
Plant
the beans about 4-5 inches apart. Beans are a large seed so you don't
have to groom the soil as much as for small seeds such as carrots or
basil.
Here's the tipi about three weeks after we built it and planted the beans:
This picture was taken about eight weeks after planting:
Here's
Llyn in the door of the tipi almost 10 weeks after planting, in late
July (those are buckets of manure tea in the lower right-hand corner):
We
harvested beans off the tipi for several weeks and yielded many, many
pounds which we took to the food bank. It was relatively easy to harvest
the beans because they hung down into the center of the tipi. Next year
we're going to grow our cucumbers on a slanted trellis so they will
hang down and be easy to harvest as well. This next picture was taken in
late September just a week or so before we had a killing frost. Here's
Llyn harvesting the dried bean-pods to thresh and save the seed for next
year's garden.
Bean
pods should be brown and mostly dry to the touch before you harvest
them for seed. They won't develop much at all after you pick them and so
you want the ripest, fullest bean-pods to ensure the most viable seeds.
Here are a few ripe ones. This variety is called "Blue Lake" pole
beans. (Blue Lakes also come in a bush-variety that won't vine up the
poles.)
This
last picture was taken in mid-October, a few weeks after the killing
frost. That's a giant artichoke plant in the foreground (started from
seed last March! - It had it's roots in a pile of seasoned rabbit
manure.) One quarter of the garden is behind the pole-bean tipi and to
the left.
Our
garden has mostly been put to bed for the winter. We have some winter
greens planted, some carrots and beets. We'll continue top harvest and
share these as they ripen. The days are getting noticeably shorter and
the winter rains have begun to fall in Oregon.
Thanks for following along on our garden adventure.
Llyn and Chris
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