This is our first year with a garden at this house and we’re all about learning and experimenting. So let me share what we learned last week about climbing plants and crowded plants!

We had already put in poles and twine for our tomatoes to climb (and the green beans), but hadn’t prioritized building something for the cucumbers. We bought wire mesh, conduit, and rebar on Sunday June 25th, and started building on Saturday July 1st.

Only 6 days had passed, but in that time, the cucumbers had sprawled across the ground, and the tendrils had intertwined with each other, and with the tomato plant next to them!

Oops!

Lesson #1 Put supports in for the cucumbers earlier next year!

Here’s the deal with cucumbers – they’re natural climbers. If they aren’t supported, they’ll sprawl across the ground, where they are more vulnerable to rot, disease, and pests. It’s better to let them climb, and get better air circulation. And they have those nifty tendrils that help them climb and support themselves! (As I understand, you don’t really want anything (that we are growing anyway) growing ON the soil itself – we prune the bottom leaves off of our plants!)

Tendrils in action

So on Saturday we put together our grid, then walked it over and realized it was way too tall (see: learning and experimenting above).

Ha. So tall.

So we made it shorter. See in the photo below on the left how the cucumbers had sprawled all over?

We untangled the cucumbers and set them up against it, hoping the tendrils would attach to it. Then we spent a bunch of time adding poles and twine for the other cucumber plants, and untangling those – we’ll see what we like best this year – the mesh method or the twine method.

Lesson #2 Maybe don’t put the cucumbers and tomatoes so close together? They were really intertwined, but are doing better after we spent the time to separate them. We’ll see what kind of harvest we get from them like this!

From left to right: we have cucumbers and tomatoes, basil, tomatoes, cilantro, and tomatoes. See how bunched up the cucumbers and tomatoes on the very left are?

Lesson #3 Go out to the garden each day to make sure things aren’t tangling up. We were already out there most days pruning, but the cucumbers really became a mess, fast! (I know we need to garden each day, but I was just NOT expecting things to grow so fast!)

Oh! Random – Steven also planted the two pepper plants that he grew from seed on Saturday (they are the two with the red dots by them):

Just for fun:

Tomatoes are growing!

The south bed, from left to right: green beans, beets, green beans, carrots, green beans, and peppers.

Lesson #4? Maybe next year do succession planting (don’t plant everything at once). In theory, all of our green beans are going to come in at the same time.

Our house with the beds:

View from the house to the beds: