The last couple of weekends have been busy with planting. We got in our brassica seeds (cauliflower, broccoli, Brussel sprouts) and root vegetables (carrots and parsnips, turnips and rutabagas), things we’ll be hoping to eat in the fall and into winter.
And now that it’s June, it’s finally time to set out the tomato and pepper starts and put in the stuff that needs warmer weather to germinate, things like corn and beans and pumpkins and summer and winter squashes. We have a whole large bed for the “sprawly” things, the pole beans and squashes that would take over our standard beds, and a whole bed for corn, as much to amuse the kids as anything else (not sure how well it’ll do in our climate).
I created this Bean Teepee out of branches from an alder tree we cut down earlier in the spring. Tied them all together with twine and planted multi-colored bean seeds along two sides of it. Hopefully in the height of summer, the kids will be able to crawl into a lush beany refuge and hide. And snack on fresh green, purple and yellow beans.
The two sides of this bed leading away from the teepee are each planted with a row of super tall sunflowers, so it should be pretty, too. And behind that, the rest of the bed is more bean tripods and 9 hills for pumpkins and squashes.
Of course, the problem with some of these most recent seeds are that the birds love them. So we tried to get creative on ways to scare them off. The bean tripods are now decorated with blank CDs. They twirl and sway in the wind, creating dancing reflections and shadows which hopefully the birds will hate.
And then there’s the corn. Using foil for “shiny” and contact paper for strength, I cut spirals like this. Then tied them onto a bunch more of those alder branches and stuck them in the ground throughout the corn bed.
We’re going to be adding a scarecrow just for the fun of making him…. but more on that later.
