Twine Wall

...Trellis...

Last night when I was looking through the Pinterest gardening section I came upon a pin about a twine ball trellis. It looked amazing and decorative but also sounded like it would really work. What you had to do was build a tall frame out of bamboo shoots or wood and wrap twine from the top to the bottom and back until you got to the other side of the frame. Then you put the tip of each bean plant in the loops made out of wrapping the twine and they would, eventually, grow up the twine in fancy little lines. Mike's dad had just advised me that the bean poles were too short so I took a screenshot and saved the directions. 

This Afternoon...

I started building the frame, it was about 5 feet tall and then I leaned the frame against the wall and started wrapping the twine around it. When I got half way done the frame started warping. I held it between my toes on each foot to try to keep it straight and it worked but the second I let go it would lean heavily to one side or the other. Finally, I decided it was because the frame wasn't evenly put together. I started pushing and pulling, trying to get it even but that didn't work. I finally got so frustrated I ripped the whole thing apart and took the twine off. I sat down and started wrapping the twine back into a ball so that I could try again with a shorter frame. I used 4 bamboo shoots and made a new 3 foot frame. I wrapped the twine around and it was good. It leaned a little but not as much as the first. I took it outside, in the constant drizzle, and tried it out. It was too small. I knew it would be so I grabbed one of the worthless tepee trellises and brought that inside. I dried it off and started taking all of the poles off except for the 4 I needed for the frame. I untied each piece of twine and set it aside. As I was working through this I suddenly see an EARWIG. I abhor earwigs. They are so disgusting and they have pincers and they're extremely bad for veggie gardens. I didn't know what to do I didn't have anything on hand to smash it, not even a shoe. So I grabbed the closest book and SLAM. I smashed it. UGH! Then I put plastic kitchen gloves on. I was too scared to touch the trellis without them. I figured it had been hiding in the twine or in one of the holes in the shoot. So I continued and finally was down to 4 poles about 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide. I wrapped the twine, lifted it up, and it didn't lean. I had done it. It looked good too. I took it out and put it in place. It really adds something and I think that the beans will look all that much better when there growing individually up there piece of twine. It'll look decorative and we'll be able to see there progress easily. 

Patch...

After that I went to check on Patch. The constant light drizzle has done everything really well and so has my thinning. I didn't realize how important thinning was until today. My radishes are like 3 times the size they were before, the carrots are sprouting real leaves like crazy, and the spinach is an inch taller. The inch doesn't seem like much but believe me it is... they've only grown 5 inches in more than a month so one inch in a few days is major. On a not so nice note the 7 strawberry plants in the 5G bucket don't have any flowers, not one. They are bushy and growing like crazy but they aren't blooming. I don't know if I need to thin them out a bit or if they are just going slower or what but the Topsy Turvy has flowers and the 8G bucket has a strawberry starting and several flowers. The 5G bucket doesn't even have the promise of a flower. All the new growth close to the crown looks like leaf growth, no buds. I hope they bloom soon because I would be disappointed if they just turned out to be greens and nothing more.