This is for islandgardener, who wanted a close-up of the tomato stakes in the front-yard vegetable patch I wrote about earlier. These are sturdy stakes, tied together in a network at the top and anchored to the edging around the raised bed. I don’t know anything about knots, but I have a feeling this gardener does.

The owner, a very pleasant Italian lady of fine vintage, told us that her son looks after the garden. Before him, it had been her husband’s garden for at least twenty years.

As Sarah wrote in a reply to some of the comments, this is a real recycler’s dream. All kinds of materials were re-used to shore up this raised bed: sheets of plexiglass and metal, old signs, office floor protectors. The soil looks rich as dark chocolate.

It’s a great use of space, too. Lots of good stuff growing: tomatoes, peppers, squash, onions, lettuce, dandelion greens, rapini. Eggplant is interplanted with basil, and those coloured wires you can see across the top of the second picture are a framework for pole beans – they’ll form a pergola as they grow, and the beans will hang downward, ready for picking or drying.

Like I said, I’ll be back to report on its progress. Especially as we’re now acquainted with the keeper of the greens.