I have used paracord too, for my pole beans. The 3/4 inch conduit poles were too weak, so I have since replaced them with 1 inch poles and cemented them in. Here is the old trellis
I want to avoid wood, it rots. This year peppers are there. i rotate the crops. I just put the trellis poles in. Waiting for the concrete to dry. No hurry as it is not being used this year.
Looks Awesome. Great Idea. Where do you buy the tent lines ? Do they come with paracord or do you buy the tensioners and cord as seperate items?
What a beautiful bean!!
Tasty and a great producer. Still eating on last years harvest.
I got away with growing beans for two years. Then the rabbits found them and wont let them get higher than a foot tall. Ground hogs like them too, but I’ll shoot the ground hogs. Beans are so much better picked out of the garden!
EDIT: Seems the price has jumped on the guy-lines, I was only paying $5 for a 10 pack, now they are $10 for 10, that’s amazon for you, they do work great, i would buy locally or wait for the price to drop
I used to see rabbits, until i got my dog! I have not seen one in 2 years.
1 Like
Antmary
Lovely garden. Looks like you weed well or did you use the Preen-garden to take care of the weeds?
Tony
Tony, my main strategy is to go around my vegetable and flower beds once in a week or in two weeks and to pull all the weeds I can see. I had grass growing in between beds and I was tied of cutting it (it was not easy when there were so many veggies growing around) and the grass roots were constantly crawling into the beds. This spring I bought about 20 bags of eco mulch on early spring sale (they were only 1$ each) and put landscaping fabric and the mulch on top of the walkways, right above the grass. I did more work cleaning the grass on the edges where it showed up under the landscape fabric. I think the price of the mulch is worth my time spending on the weeding work later in the season. Besides it is very wet now and walking on the mulch and not on the dirt makes the things a lot cleaner. I think that I’ll add some more bags to the side walks each year, and the decomposed mulch will run right into the beds and will add to the organic matter over the years. I do use herbicides in the places which I do not care about, but not in the my veggie garden.
1 Like
Try grrowing a row of edible soybeans next to your beans. Rabbits and deer will eat those instead of your beans.
I have a very fierce dog. He’s a Yorky lol! The neighbors have a Newfindler, Rottweiler, and a Labrador. They still get deer and animals eating their flowers. They Know when the dogs are in, and push it to the limit. We live where the wildlife is flourishing. We have problems with coyotes too. I saw a big one the other day in the middle of the day just below my orchard. I’m only about five miles from were the Lapeer Co mounted division lost two horses in the farm field by the barn. It happened a coup[le days apart. I think we have Coy wolves here. They are a cross of wolf and coyote. They are spreading across the upper US and Canada. They even have them in New York city. They leave scat with brown fur in it. Maybe they are helping my rabbit population too. I have seen them fallowing the turkeys too. We are backed up to 600 acres of monastery land that’s really rugged hilly overgrown land. It’s so thick its hard to walk through it.
I till my mulch in too. Sometimes its three inches of compost, or three inches of horse bedding with manure, or now like shown above shredded wood chips with bark and leaves. It makes great organic black dirt. It shows up more black when it is being tilled because its moist. In the picture its dried out and looks lighter. Mulching keeps the ground moist and less weeds! It’s a lot better than pulling weeds and having to water all the time.
You know it’s more my location than my dog, the animals have not seen these fruits before. Most don’t have a clue. The squirrels when in the yard usually are burying nuts in my raised beds, and not taking anything.
My first year raised bed combo of strawberry and raspberry!
There’re lots of berries in the patch and the stem of the raspberry comes from the ground is thick as pencil or more!
I’m quite happy to see some raspberry flower buds this year even just cut down and transplanted last autumn! yay…
1 Like
Tom,
Those plants look healthy and happy. You must be doing something right.
Hope you pick a nice crop,
Thanks for sharing the photo.
This is my favorite cherry tomato, yum 
Beautiful strawberries, Tom. Great way to foil snails and slugs. What soil did you use for your raised beds?
hoosierquilt,
Thanks for the compliment. I did not think I get anything this year since it was newly built last autumn. Now I want to get the fruits from my labor! 
Spoiled!
I used lots of composted horse manure, kitchen compost, some potting soil, some garden soil from cleaning out last year’s pots and whatever from last year chopped plant materials like tomatoes, squash vines that got buried to the bottom for its first fill. Then I piled in more composted horse manure this spring.
It’s very pliable at this point. I just wonder which plant will dominate to fertile real estate first, the raspberries or the strawberries? And wonder if they can coexist without fight for land, like in GOT, either “you win or you die” scenario… 
Tom
David,
I love tomato!
I like your interplant tomatoes with marigold. It’s lovely to look at and I suppose the marigolds deter some critters, I just don’t recall what that is!
It’s definitely a nice walk in the garden to see something like that… I love it.
Tom