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Post by templeton on Mar 8, 2016 23:54:25 GMT -5
prairiegarden, I do a bit of trellissing to save garden bed space - tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumber (tho it likes to tumble along the ground), melons. I'm thinking of trying favas this winter. I have also read some discussion of growing zucchini attached to stakes to stop them spreading everywhere.
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Post by steev on Mar 9, 2016 0:57:26 GMT -5
Favas on trellises? Never heard of pole favas. Are there no bush zucchini that you like?
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Post by prairiegarden on Mar 9, 2016 2:10:09 GMT -5
Templeton, do you trellis melons and/or squash on sloped trellises or absolutely vertical ones? If absolutely vertical how do you make them? I've been thinking of pallets in an upside down V shape wouldn't save as much space and the space between the pallets would be pretty much unusable but would be less likely to collapse. Thoughts?
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Post by steve1 on Mar 9, 2016 5:04:21 GMT -5
prairiegarden I grow my maxima pumpkins up and on a 7 ft hedge. Trombocino zucchini are another good candidate. As for fixed trellis I have grown cucumber and melon on deer wire trellis which I use for beans generally. Larger gaps mean you can pick through the trellis from one side - excluding large melons!
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Post by zeedman on Mar 9, 2016 20:29:27 GMT -5
While I don't use the techniques in the original post, I've always enjoyed growing vegetables vertically in garden culture. Many of the varieties I grow were chosen for that attribute... beans, runner beans, limas, yardlong beans, cucumbers, bitter melon & various gourds, and indeterminate tomatoes. Last year that took about 600 feet of trellis. It is a lot of work putting up the trellises, but it pays off in easier picking; straighter, cleaner produce; and far less insect & rodent damage. 2015 was the first year I trellised most of my tomatoes, and it was the best harvest I've ever had. It turns out that trellises in large numbers have some unexpected side benefits. A row of tall trellises just inside the fence line prevents the deer from jumping over... it appears that they won't jump over unless they see an unobstructed landing zone. Interplanted with tall blocks of corn, the trellises also act as wind breaks, and create a warmer micro-climate in the center of the garden. In my Northern climate, this really benefits heat lovers like okra and eggplant, and tends to protect the interior from the first frost or two near the end of the season. Protecting the Northwest corner of the garden is especially important, since cool winds generally come from that direction. About tromboncino squash. I've grown it vertically, and had really straight beautiful squash; but not as many of them as if the plants were allowed to trail. When allowed to sprawl, the vines root aggressively wherever they touch the ground, and put out new runners... this really increases the yield late in the season. I would still heartily recommend trellising Tromboncino for those with limited space.
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Post by philagardener on Mar 9, 2016 21:11:04 GMT -5
Wonderful looking garden, zeedman ! How do you run your rows (North-South?) I always worry about rows shading each other when I grow pole beans in several ranks.
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Post by steev on Mar 10, 2016 0:26:30 GMT -5
zeedman: That is a lovely garden; I agree with your deer observations, as well as the wind concerns; those are both serious concerns for me. I intend to deal with the wind by planting trees on the East/West (the North/South is mostly dealt with by existing trees; the deer, well, I need to get the whole place fenced; not this year, gotta get a house built first.
Apparently you grow where there is good moisture; I expect my precipitation to end NLT early May, not to return 'til late October; meanwhile it will typically be hotter than hell in July (when my veggies go into aestivation; these organisms haven't survived without knowing what they're doing). I'm mostly willing to trust their judgement, it being based on their survival, it being no less based on their survival than, ultimately, my own. If we, in general, think we can "control" our ecosystem, we're screwed.
We may be able to exert the necessary level of total control on an extra-Terrestrial colony, but only because it must be an extremely limited ecosystem. Earth is largely beyond our control, which is its strength, however much that is not to our short-term use.
Without wishing to disparage those who may wish/want to move off Earth (I salute their pioneering spirit; to be a space-man was my only childhood desire), those of us committed to staying here must make every effort to ensure the continued diversity/vitality of Earth's ecosystem. Our Great Mother deserves no less than that we safeguard her children, our cousins, our still inadequately-known environment, our (for all we know) only refuge from an uncaring galaxy.
Is that vertical enough?
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Post by philagardener on Mar 10, 2016 7:00:09 GMT -5
Straight up!
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Post by zeedman on Mar 10, 2016 21:08:48 GMT -5
philagardener , the rows run both ways - especially on the outside, due to the aforementioned deer (there are a lot of them). Throughout the gardens, I try to arrange the trellises as baffles; not only as wind breaks, but to act as barriers between different varieties of the same species. This allows me to save a lot of reasonably pure seed in a relatively small area. When I plant a lot of trellises adjacent, though, I try to run E-W, with 42" between rows. In my latitude, that spacing nearly eliminates shading. When I lived in San Diego, where the sun rose a lot higher, I could use 36" spacing. Tall flowers contribute to the vertical strategy too; cleome, "Zebrina" flowering mallow, and sunflowers have naturalized in the garden - with my blessings. Litchi tomato & devil's claw (Martynia) volunteer too, but they are a mixed blessing, since they both have anti-social properties... one thorny, one stinky. They all grow 3-4' tall, fill in spaces where something failed, and help to attract beneficial insects.
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Post by templeton on Mar 13, 2016 18:27:09 GMT -5
Favas on trellises? Never heard of pole favas. Are there no bush zucchini that you like? Steve, my favas often lodge, and fall over the paths in my narrow beds. I think a bit of support might help them. Haven't thought it through, but perhaps sandwich them between two panels. Zucchini the same - they grow OK, but when they sprawl everywhere it makes working in my restricted beds difficult. An i do prefer tromboncini - I encourage them to crawl up my epaliered apricots, which have finished fruiting by the time the trombs are kicking in. T
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Post by gilbert on Mar 13, 2016 21:28:09 GMT -5
Beautiful trellises, zeedman! Of course, the true, ultimate, vertical gardening . . . is my potato tower experiment! I grew tromboncino squash one year on land borrowed from my Uncle. The squash ran up and through a dense lilac hedge dividing the area from the neighbors. A squash got bigger and bigger since I couldn't see it. It stuck part way out of the hedge and had a nice bulbous "head." Then one day the neighbor came to my uncle with a story about a giant snake! About the link in Nathan's first post; I think all these things are just greenwashing. I read a sort of interesting but totally wrong book about how structures like this are the true future of farming. Workers would wear hazmats suits and enter through airlocks to avoid contaminating the bubble. Robots would predominate, etc. I'm skeptical of all trends toward more mechanization and complexity. Once one giant robot, controlled by one company, produces everything everyone wants; how will people gain access to these things? It is the Robinson crusoe paradox. He can't expect Man Friday to work for nothing for him and then buy the goods he makes. As companies pay workers less or eliminate them altogether, they find that they sell less products, and the more that the whole world becomes one market, the worse it gets. Revenue starts to fall. So the companies lay off more workers, move to cheaper countries, or buy robots, or on the other hand raise the price. Either way, it is a vicious cycle.
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Post by steev on Mar 18, 2016 22:17:16 GMT -5
Hence the need for Soylent Green. Although I think that product is lipid-deficient, being made from the malnourished class; I think we must really start feeding the factory with the fat-heads of the 1%. I'm thinking Soylent Purple, so much more regal, n'est-ce pas? Surely they deserve no less, being such exemplars of humanity? Luckily, they are already largely confined to gated communities, sort of like CAFOs, and equally malodorous (culturally, at least). Golly; hope I'm not sounding all French-Revolutiony; I mean, that just got all ugly, so unrefined; so un-French, almost Slavic or American!
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Post by shoshannah on Aug 18, 2016 22:33:07 GMT -5
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Post by steev on Aug 18, 2016 22:49:29 GMT -5
On my farm, the more things are up in the air, the more they desiccate; I'll be interested in vertical gardening when I get a green-house.
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Post by shoshannah on Aug 22, 2016 15:10:45 GMT -5
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