Warning: Vine Crossing

With even more sun this season after the storm took out more trees around me, I decided the best weed block might just be sprawling vines across the bare spots between the read beds. It seems to be effective where the sweet potato and gourd vines have thus far covered, but I knew I’d eventually have a problem moving around in that area without damaging branches of these vines.

Solution: Low catwalk bridges that allow the expanding vines to cross underneath.
The bushel basket gourd vines are practically kudzu now, growing a foot or more per day. The main patch runs to the east (away from the camera and center of the garden in the picture below) and I’ve done my best to discourage them from entering the blackberries and asparagus so far.

However, my access to the back is important, so I pegged together this catwalk system last weekend and the vines have already grown under it (this is the upper/ eastern end of the vines shown above). Still a “construction zone” though….

And back the other direction from earlier that morning, sneaking over a gap in the rice growing in the ditch to catch rinse water from the main well access:

And the first leg of another one, so that access to the okra and tommy-toes on the left won’t be cut off by the sweet potato vines encroaching from the right.

Strange? Maybe…

Functional? Hopefully…

Yeah, well, a lot of things aren’t conventional back here.