Hello there! ANOTHER month gone by without a single post! This is the time of year when The Happy Homesteader is too pooped to do much blogging. Yeah, I know, first I blame the hot weather, then I blame all the bugs and then – as if that wasn’t one excuse too many – I get to blame it on a long, hard growing and selling season. Whine, whine, whine.
BUT. I’ve just discovered a new best friend on the homestead that has already made my life easier! My new best friend is all the handy panels that we purchased last week from our local Tractor Supply store (have I mentioned that I love that place?!?). Just lookee here:
This is a photo of my old method of trellising on bamboo run horizontally with twine looped up and over and down and up and over and down and up and over and down and . . . . yeah, you get it. You can see snow peas climbing up the twine behind the winter squash, tomatoes, parsley and eggplant.
But here’s the new handy-dandy way of trellising here on The Little Half Acre:
These neat Handy Panels are just the right size at 50″ tall and 8′ long. I can easily lift them and put them in place wherever I need them (cattle panels can be as long as 16 feet and, therefore, unwieldy) and the snow peas climb up them just as happily as little green clams! Even better, because some of them were slightly bent in places (who cares?!?) they gave us a discounted price! Normally just under $15 per panel, a couple of them were discounted to 50% off and the rest at 25% off. What a deal!
I left the bamboo in place behind the panels and just zip tied the ends of the panels to the upright fence posts to anchor them. And, because I can lean the panels back rather than having them stand upright, it frees up more space in the raised beds to inter-plant other veggies. So far, The Happy Homesteader is quite pleased.
