Sunday, April 22, 2007

Climbing frames

We have spent the whole day out in the garden in glorious weather today and have made great progress.

Using the left over timber batons from the shelf building indoors, James constructed three frames to which we have attached pea/bean support netting. These climbing frames will support the french beans, mange tout peas and sweet peas. We already had a piece of trellis which has been attached to the fence for the climbing nasturtiums. We found that good old drawing pins were the best way of attaching the netting to the timber frames - you'd never have thought that drawing pins would be useful in the garden!

Whilst James was cutting the batons and drilling holes for the screws etc to construct the timber frames, I got on with some other planting jobs. I forked over the remaining empty soil in the beans bed before the frames were to go in and we are both really pleased with the condition of the soil considering it was absolutely awful when we started. I also sowed two containers of Carrot 'Chantenay' and transplanted the nasturtiums and sweet peas into long trough containers to go at the base of the frames.

I unfortunately didn't have enough time left to actually put the dwarf french beans in the ground, so this will have to wait now until Tuesday at the earliest. I've moved my tray of leek seedlings out into the coldframe though as they are almost ready to be transplanted into one of the raised beds too.

The veggie garden has suddenly started to have a busy feel to it today - the vertical frames have definitely made a big difference.


2 comments:

Ashleigh said...

I planted my dwarf beans and runner beans outside yesterday! They'd been on my balcony for so long that I thought I had better plant them out. Hopefully no frosts next week!

Anonymous said...

height definetly makes a difference in the garden, even when its "just" hard landscaping and there's no (as yet) greenery growing up it. I noticed it the first time i put canes up, then, when the greenhouse went up.. what a difference to the garden! I'm just looking forward to getting a) taller canes up (for pea/beans) and b)things growing up them..

keth
xx