GROW YOUR GARDEN "UP" AS NATURE INTENDED

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Peas and beans are legumes that fix nitrogen in the soil even as they consume it in their own growth. Tall, late-season corn is a heavy feeder, and when planted out in front of the pea/bean row, it benefits from all that energy. Corn doesn't replace nitrogen, however ...so I interplant leftover pole bean seed in the corn rows. I let the beans mature and harvest the pods for dry beans.

Beans don't replace all the nitrogen that corn uses, so if I get to it in late summer, I plant oats, winter wheat, or another vigorous green manure crop on the plot and let it grow up and around the corn. (If I don't find the time to plant oats, I let weeds grow up.) Then, oats or weeds are tilled in (mowed down if they threaten to go to seed before tilling time) to add their fiber and nutrients to the soil.

Over the season, pea pods, bean-pod ends, stalks and shuckings and cobs of the sweet corn, stalks and deseeded heads of sunflowers, and stalks of Jerusalem artichoke are shredded and composted ...and the finished compost returned to the garden plot. That way, nearly everything the plants produce during the year but a few edible seeds and kernels is returned to the land almost as efficiently as the way Nature builds forest and meadow loam.

By burying meat scraps and fish leavings, tilling in nitrogen-rich green manures and compost (plus a share of each winter's wood ashes, and lime every third year) to contribute phosphorus and potassium, I am actually putting more major plant nutrients into the soil than I take out.

Semiclimbers

Next in the height sequence, and next south in the garden plan, are the vigorous ground vines such as cucumbers and summer squash that can extend runners to twenty feet from their roots but need coaxing to grow up. I leave a good yard of footpath out front of the rows (indeed, I will lay planks or flat-rock pavers to create a semipermanent path) to give myself plenty of room to fasten both vines and heavy fruit to the supports.

After trying and rejecting support frames using thin-wire poultry netting and wood lattice (that sag and deteriorate quickly), I've settled on lightweight welded-wire stock fencing with a 4" x 6" or larger mesh so I can get a hand through to harvest the back. I bend end wires of 4' x 4' panels of the (semistiff) fence over 3 1/2' x 4' frames made from recycled building lumber or inexpensive 2" x 2" x 8' partition studs. (You can build eight-feetlong frames, but I find them wobbly unless reinforced with angle-braces and plywood cleats at corners—making them heavier than I like to horse around the garden.) As the illustration shows, I fasten a vertical support down the middle of the frame, notching it into the top and bottom horizontals.

In the garden, I lean the frame back so it looks up at the high summer sun, supporting it with a pair of boards hinged from the top (on nothing but nails) so the frame can be adjusted to angle back at 45° or more.

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