Row 8: The Trellis

Here I erect a 125-foot-long, 6-foot-tall net trellis for gourmet
delicacies like pole peas and pole beans. The bean vines block
almost all water that would to on beyond it and so this row gets
more irrigation than it otherwise might. The peas are harvested
early enough to permit a succession sowing of Purple Sprouting
broccoli in mid-July. Purple Sprouting needs a bit of sprinkling to
germinate in the heat of midsummer, but, being as vigorous as kale,
once up, it grows adequately on the overspray from the raised bed.
The beans would be overwhelmingly abundant if all were sown at one
time, so I plant them in two stages about three weeks apart. Still,
a great many beans go unpicked. These are allowed to form seed, are
harvested before they quite dry, and crisp under cover away from the
sprinklers. We get enough seed from this row for planting next year,
plus all the dry beans we care to eat during winter. Dry beans are
hard to digest and as we age we eat fewer and fewer of them. In
previous years I've grown entire rows of dry legume seeds at the
garden's edge.