Cucumber Tipi - Part 2

In the Cucumber Tipi Part 1 post, you saw a patch of weedy orchard grass turned into a central structure in the Wood for Food garden. We now have a tipi for growing veggies vertically out of the first underground aspen hugelkultur bed.

Just for fun, this photo shows me standing in 2012 about where the tipi is now! The tipi would be on my shoulders, though. (The fence post in the above picture is the same post you see in the picture below, taken from a different direction.)

With the tipi erected, it needed something for the plants to hold onto. I love using old materials instead of buying new things that require resources to be extracted from the earth. I contacted the owners of a local gem, the Esther Bricques Winery, to find out how they source their trellis wire. They happened to have some wire that was ready to be re-purposed, and I experienced again the main lesson this garden has taught me: envision having what's needed, knowing that it will surface, and it will. Thank you so much, Linda and Steve Colvin, for helping make this project happen!

Around and around and around I went with the wire. It started raining but I was determined to finish. Here the circular trellis wire is attached, looking up from inside the tipi. This is a much heavier gauge wire than I've worked with before, and I really like the structural integrity that it added to the tipi.

The wire is attached with small fencing staples. 

I left a gap between two of the poles for the door. 

And now, we have cucumber sprouts! 

We can't wait to see the plants grow, sit in the shade of their leaves, 

and taste the crisp, sweet goodness of an Armenian cucumber straight off the vine.

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Meanwhile, back in the "early sowing outdoors" beds, things are coming right along! This is our first time eating carrots from the garden at the beginning of June.

 Fresh carrots straight out of the soil taste like, "life is good."

"I like to eat like a rainbow!"