Working Pretty Well

I love beans, all types of beans, and fresh picked beans are the best.  They are crispy and sweet when blanched.  Some beans are good to eat fresh like Asian Long bean.   So I’ve never missed growing beans each summer.   In the past, growing beans has taken up some valuable space in our small vegetable garden owing to the ‘teepees’ I constructed to hold them up.   I had to give the base enough circumference to withstand the wind so a large chunk of space inside the circle was wasted.   Then I bought a couple of ready-made metal bean poles that take up one square foot in area and stand seven feet tall.   They were great as they used less space and each has four pegs to hold it to the ground.  But, the rust was a problem and when the beans grew really thick I had difficulty reaching the pods inside the square without breaking the vines.

I had a Eureka moment one day when I walked under one of the trellises.  Why not grow the beans on a trellis?   The bean flowers look pretty and the pods will hang nicely.  It doesn’t take up space if I put the trellis over the walkway and it doesn’t matter how thick the beans grow I can walk under them when I want to pick beans.

Have you ever tried to find a small trellis that can go over a mere two feet of walkway?  It was like finding a needle in a haystack.   So I ended up making my own from plastic garden rods and they work really well.  Thinking outside the box frequently works well.  This time I just thought of  beans as a vine flower like Clematis or Moonflower, not a vegetable.