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Many gardeners use a single 16' cattle panel as an arch, placing each end in adjoining raised beds.

The layout of my garden didn't allow this arrangement of a single cattle panel. So to fit in the compact cut the panel into two 8' lengths, each 48“ tall adapting two separate beds for trellis gardening.

Pole beans were a first choice - growing bush beans hadn't worked well because of their shorter productive time and the space they take up. The Early Riser variety from Adaptive Seeds got my attention with a claim for quick growth and good productivity, so this was my choice.

Feeling adventurous I decided to grow our favorite winter squash on the other trellis.

See why this turned out to be more of an adventure than I imagined!Transplanting composted seedlings

Soil in a raised bed is too soft to hold a trellis vertical given the strong winds we often experience. So I pounded T-posts into the underlying ground. The trellises held strong through the growing season. However, when the plants were done, presence of a trellis precluded preparing the bed for next season - adding soil amendments and mixing them it, adding top soil and compost, and then sowing a cover crop of crimson clover. a challenge to preparing such a bed lay in removing the T-posts. They were so embedded in the rocky soil beneath the bed that I couldn't remove them by myself. So bought a T-post puller, which made quick work of extracting the posts.