It’s third time lucky for me and my beans! My beans succumbed to August gales the past two years, toppling over quite quickly when the strong winds blew in and collapsing to the ground. This year though, they have stayed standing! I am so pleased, as my neighbour and I really did our best to build a wind-proof structure, and it paid off. The supports withstood the test of 55mph winds, even with the added pressure of the rain and the mature plants.
For those of you who have not been so successful with wigwams or A frames, here’s how we succeeded this season…. we built a combination of the two.
If you look closely at the photo, you’ll see that at either end of the structure, and in the centre, I have built a wigwam. Then there are the 2 top horizontal bamboo canes sitting on top of the 3 wigwams. This made the basic structure really sturdy, and my neighbour and I were persistent in pushing the canes as deep into the soil as we possibly could for added stability.
With the basic structure in place, then we added the extra vertical canes between the wigwams. Again, we pushed them deep into the soil. We were also very careful with tying the canes together as tightly as we could – girl guides style!
It’s been a bit of a game changer – I can’t tell you how happy I feel to have managed to defeat the autumnal winds… hope it helps to give some inspiration for your own beans next spring!!