How To…

Build a Pea Trellis:

We built a few pea trellises back in June, but faced with filling up the garden before we run out of time (for so long we thought we would run out of space!) we’ve put more peas in around the circle. This time, we documented the whole process so that you can do it along with us! Woooo!

Materials:

• Wood stakes (the same ones we used for the potato towers)
• String (we used a plastic twine this time, but we used clothe the first time and liked it better)
• Something to bang the stakes into the ground (a hammer, a large rock, whatever you like)

First, find a place where you want this to go. Weed it, hula hoe it, rake it… make the ground nice for the potential peas.

Lovely.

Next, space the stakes out in the space. Ours are 2 1/2 or 3 feet apart in a nice curve to outline the circle, but yours don’t have to be! Straight lines, triangles, circles, zig-zags, and shapes of your own creation are all acceptable.

Make sure that the stakes are stable and really in there!

Ones the stakes feel sturdy and are nicely spaced, start tying the strings to the stakes. We tied knots onto the two exterior stakes, and just wrapped the string around the middle stake a few times, as you can see in this picture:

We started at the bottom and worked up, spacing the strings 8 inches or so apart. I had some problems with that this time though. You want to tie the strings pretty tight, just so that everything stays sturdy. But when I was doing that this time, I noticed that when I tied a new string, the one below it would get limper, presumably because the tight strings were tying the stakes closer together. I am not sure if this was because of the different kind of string (I don’t know why it would be) or because I was trying to tie them tighter, but something wasn’t working out. With enough fiddling, though, they all turned out pretty taut.

When all of the horizontal strings are tied and situated, start doing a few vertical ones. I did two between each of the stakes. We secured them in a way similar to how we tied the strings to the stakes, tying knots at the top and bottom:

And just wrapping the vertical string around to horizontal string once:

And voila!

Next, just plant your peas right under the bottom string, like so (we’re spacing them pretty close together because they haven’t been germinating very well):

Water and you’re done! Beautiful! Our peas are already starting to creep up the other trellis, so we will update you soon when they are totally covered.

Build a Potato Tower:

We got the idea to make potato towers from a classmate, Miles, on our way to an Agroecology field trip. With a plot and a half in squash, we have been feeling especially tight on space, so the idea of growing vertically was really appealing.

What’s a potato tower, you might be asking? It is pretty much the same as it sounds: a cylinder of dirt that you grow potatoes in instead of putting them directly into the ground. The idea is that you add more dirt as they grow so they have more roots and so more potatoes from less space.

First! Materials:

Wooden stakes (formally used to keep folks off the new grass planted around campus):

Chicken wire (salvaged from outside the Dickinson Science Building):

Compost (or a mulch and soil mixture, like we made):

Potatoes (found abandoned in the Home Depot parking lot):

First, arrange the stakes in a roundish shape – though a square would surely work, too, if that strikes your fancy. Then, wrap the chicken wire around the stakes, like so:

The first time we tried this, our oval was too big for the chicken wire that we had, so we had to make some adjustments. But no harm! Next, try to secure the chicken into the soil a bit, so that the soil or compost that is added doesn’t leak out as much:

Then, fill the structure with a few inches of soil or compost:

Even out the soil so that it is flatish, so that the potatoes will hopefully reach the top of the soil at the same time. We used a hoe for this:

And arrange the potatoes on top of that soil. We spaced ours by about 8 inches:

Then, cover the potatoes with the rest of the soil or compost:

In as manly a fashion as you see fit:

Water the pile and observe:

As the potatoes grow, cover them with more dirt to fill the tower. If you/we do it right, when the potatoes are ready to be harvested the stakes and chicken wire can be removed, so dirt and potatoes splay out and the potatoes can be harvested without much digging. We’ll keep you posted as to how that works out for us.

There is also this great tutorial from Sunset Magazine, if you are looking for more information or a more aesthetically pleasing design.