Grow Up!

While planning my garden, I learned that there are quite a few plants that you can grow "up" and save on precious garden space.  My thoughts were that some of these plants produce fruit that is way too heavy to have hanging, but I'm giving it a try. 

The first obvious choice for growing "up", for me, was sugar snap peas.  My family loves these, and I only say that when it's something we all love.  A vegetable that everyone in my family loves carries a certain amount of clout, so for me to plant sugar snap peas was a no brainer.  We tried 2 different fence plans, the first was straight up and the second was a tent-like shape. 




Straight Up!

The Tent!

After watching them grow, I believe the Straight Up plan works best for these.  They just didn't seem to get the whole "Tent" concept, they wanted to grow straight up.  I was just being cheap anyway, wanted to save a few bucks on fence posts, so now I know that I need to buy a few more.  I've already decided that next year I'm planting more sugar snaps, I may plant along the whole back side of the fence.  My husband doesn't think this is such a great idea, he says the deer will eat them if they are up against the fence.  I'll find a way to make it work, possibly hire my sharp-shooter son to keep an eye on them at night - ha!  I may just have to redirect my Scarecrow.

The second veggie I decided to grow "Up" is cucumbers.  I didn't plant a lot of cucumbers because I don't like them very much.  I like them in salsa and sometimes in a cucumber salad but for the most part, not so much.  I planted them using the "Straight Up" plan, they aren't big enough yet to see if this will work, but I'm pretty confident it will.

Cukes.

Cukes with Zucchini

As you can see, my cucumbers share space with my zucchini squash.  I'm hoping this will work out well, the cukes only take up a small amount of space at the end of the box.

I have two more veggies I'm growing "up", Butternut Squash (this is the one I was concerned about) and my Rich Sweetness melons.  I'm not too concerned about the melons, their full grown weight is only 1/4#.

Rich Sweetness Melons

Butternut Squash

We shall see.  The fences are plenty sturdy and quite simple to put together.  We just used 2 - 5' T-Posts and about 5' of 4x2x48" welded wire fence.  All we did was wrap the ends around the posts.  I highly recommend wearing gloves when you work with the fencing. 

We are growing one more vegetable "up" but I'm going to share that in another post.  They are so special, they deserve their own page. 

So that's it for me this week, I hope you all have a blessed weekend.  I'll be working at the Farmer's Market on Saturday selling cheese from Bowling Green Farm.  So get out to your farmer's market and support your local small farms!