Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Malabar Spinach on The New Plastic Trellis

I have a large garden but I prefer to have a clean look, as much as I possibly can.  Its nice to have space for the kids to run around, throw some balls, badminton and splash water  for fun.


Most of the vegetables and herbs are grown on the sides, front and back of the house.  This keeps most of the space free.


One of the vegetable which is easy to grow and I have been doing it for the last few months is the Sweet Potato leaves.  In its natural state, it requires a  huge area to crawl.  Instead of that, I have made trellis for it to grow upwards.  It grows like wildfire!  Excited with the ease to grow the Sweet Potato leaves, I wanted to duplicate my success.  I also wanted to grow the Malabar Spinach.  There are two varieties.  Green and purple vine.   I am growing both.






The New Trellis 

The new trellis is made of plastic pipe and joint together.   I used 2 ft metal rod nailed to the ground and the trellis slot onto it to ensure that its strong.  At least strong enough when the Malabar Spinach and Sweet Potato leaves crawls vertically.  It might even be a shade during hot or raining days.




Malabar Spinach which I purchased from the local Nursery


The trellis is tied with nylon strings.



Sweet Potato leaves cuttings

I can just imagine it in my mind, how beautiful this trellis will look when it has a fully grown vine.  All green and lush.  I feel so happy just thinking about it!





Malabar Spinach starting to crawl upwards!
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12 comments:

  1. Malabar spinach is easy to grow... with trellis like that, it would be nice and shady.

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  2. Thanks Bangchik. I admire your healthy Malabar Spinach too. Have you harvested any for meals?

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  3. Your trellis looking very neat and ready for the vines to climb. Cant wait to see the purple and green malabar making a lovely shady path there.

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  4. Is this copyrighted? I wanna make one like this! So neat and tidy and cute-lah the path to your house. You are superb :)

    P/S: Just thought of building one for my new passion fruit vine...

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  5. p3chandan: Thanks. On this trellis I have green malabar and sweet potato leave. The red malabar is inside. But I am looking forward to see it grow well and harvest it for meals too :-)

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  6. Milka: Go ahead! I would love to see a lovely trellis in your garden. Think of me everytime you look at it. I love Passion Fruit! I am growing a few plant myself.

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  7. They will look spectacular climbing on your trellis. Like how you design them.

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  8. I am thinking of passion fruit too when I saw your trellis! In fact, I am keen to grow passion fruit too! Wonder if I will be able to germinate them from seeds. I love seeing the fruits hanging down from the vines. I like your DIY trellis. I think more of us should put on our creativity hat and use things available in our house to produce useful tools/structure for our gardening interest, rather than just get a carpenter to make one or buy from the store! Brilliant of you to create that trellis!

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  9. Malay-Kadazan girl: I hope so too. Thanks for coming by.

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  10. JC: That was my initial idea too. Passion Fruit is not difficult to grow from seeds. Thanks for liking my trellis. I would love to see pictures of a similar replica at your home :-)

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  11. hi Christina,

    I am also inspired to make a trellis like this.. how were you able to nail the plastic rods to the ground? When you say ground-- did you mean concrete? The ground is concrete then you put soil on top of it (in between the bricks)? Thanks in advance.. I am going to put you on my blogroll and look forward to visiting your site if I need to be refreshed and inspired :)

    thanks again..

    regards,
    Lanie

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  12. Hi Lanie. Thanks for coming by and putting me in your blogroll. I buy a screw rod and cut into 3 pcs of 2 ft and nail it to the earth. Ask the Hardware store to cut it - you will not be able to do it yourself. Nail it to the earth, at least half of it. Then slot the trellis on top of it - 1 pc of rod for each "feet". This will keep it from being unstable. If you build the whole thing yourself, the cost will be less than RM25 per pc. Enjoy!

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