Plot Against Hunger has been finishing up harvests of plants that wintered over at Central Library and preparing for our spring crops. During a Friday work party, Puwen Lee spent some time thinking about how to trellis the peas we had planted on February 26.
Puwen describes the design.
She came up with a simple, cheap, and relatively easy idea that used an abundant Arlington crop, bamboo, and baling twine, which she had on hand. Because many people in Arlington have planted bamboo as a screen or windbreak, and because it is notoriously invasive, there are often piles of cut bamboo at curbside awaiting trash pick-up. Plot members are always on the lookout for these, and we had some stashed at the garden.
Puwen sawed four of the poles to equal lengths and anchored them in the ground vertically by the set of peas we were trellising.
The trellis begins to take shape.
Then she proceeded to cut the horizontal poles to length and lash them to the vertical poles, so the trellis began to take shape.
Close-up of the lashing technique.
Puwen then lashed on another set of horizontal poles before creating a criss-cross network of twine for the peas to grab onto and climb.
The trellis with its webbing of twine.
To gild the lily, she added smaller stakes of bamboo between the peas and tied twine from them to the bottom horizontal pole.
The peas get a leg up!
The result: An excellent trellis made of material to hand.
What a trellis! And the horizontal poles are adjustable. (Photo by Andrew Nuckols)
While you may not have bamboo, this works with small branches downed after a storm. If you look around, you’ll probably see something you could recycle into a trellis as well.
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