Kids Go Gardening - make a bean hut

Grow your own cool summer hideaway

Summer time means long, hot days and lots of time spent outside.  Wouldn’t it be great to have your own hideaway?  Somewhere quiet to read a book or have a rest.

Grow a bean teepee and you’ll have a cool summer hideaway that you can eat!

Max grew his bean teepee on the lawn but you can grow one in a patch of soil.  Here’s how he did it.

1. Pick a sunny patch of garden - if it’s a lawn, get an adult to dig out a circle shape.
2. Make your circle into a ‘seed bed’ by digging the soil with a garden trowel until its nice and crumbly OR if you have dug out a circle in the lawn, fill the hole with planting mix or topsoil from the garden.
3. Make your teepee shape with long bamboo stakes or pieces of wood tied at the top.
4. Plant your beans and flowers straight into the soil - Max used a mix of climbing beans and Sweet Peas.
5. Wind some string around the bamboo stakes - this is what your beans will climb on!
6. Don’t forget to water them!
7. Wait a little while and soon you’ll have beans winding their way all over your teepee.  They grow really quickly!

Good idea: Use purple, yellow and green beans for a rainbow coloured hideaway!

Bean Jokes

What kind of beans won’t grow in a garden? Jelly beans!
What’s the fastest vegetable? A runner bean!

 If you don’t like beans, there are heaps of other flowers and veges you can use to make a teepee hideaway:

Corn and sunflowers: These plants support themselves so you don’t need to build a tepee first. Just plant a circle of corn or sunflower seeds (or both). Leave a gap for the entrance and a space in the middle big enough to sit in.
Cucumbers and gherkins growing these plants on a teepee protects the ‘fruit’ from spoiling on the ground, but the leaves are bit scratchy so be careful! Gherkins are baby cucumbers, which make delicious pickles.
Baby pumpkins or gourds: Gourds come in interesting shapes and you can turn them into pretty bowls, jugs or little birdhouses when they dry out next autumn.
Hops and nasturtiums: These are climbing plants that grow really fast like beans. You can’t eat hops but you can eat nasturtium flowers!

 

Look for these products, tips and advice at a Go Gardening Store near you.

Dig out a circle shape and add topsoil and planting mix.

Make your teepee with long bamboo stakes and wind string around for the beans to climb on.

Plant your bean seed in the soil and water them.