Wall of Peas

The small house that we rent and happily occupy has a lovely little backyard, but while being lovely it does, still, remain fairly little.  Luckily it backs onto 11 acres of open land, which makes it feel truly expansive.  But we are limited in the kinds of gardening that we can do - so square-foot-savvy garden projects are the order of the day.  Here's one I am pretty excited about:

The Wall of Peas:  We dug out a 14" wide strip along the top edge of our yard.  It is a south-facing slope that is covered by the automatic sprinkler system, so we've got scheduled watering covered.  I dropped in some landscaping divider material and we filled the trench with a mix of compost, topsoil, and garden soil. Then a framework of redwood 2x2 was fit together (lap-joints where rails meet tops) and holes drilled at equal intervals in all the vertical members.  Stakes were driven in and the frame was set into the trench and screwed into the stakes to make it nice a sturdy.  Then garden twin was threaded through and through and over and under and around and that's a lot of knots.

The first set of peas were sowed a bit over a week ago, we're planning three flights.  We chose Alderman Peas, sometimes called Telephone Pole Peas because they are a tall-growing vining variety.  By June we should have a wall of peas ready for picking!  The little fence was a quick project with the kids and helps keep them from accidentally stepping all over the vegetable bed!