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Camp Internet's Global Gardening Studies are open to all Camp Expedition Teams. RAIN's Youth Technology Corps members are Expedition Team Leaders for Communities taking part.

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The first thing you need to do, is to decide where you want to put your teepee. You should pick a place that gets lots of full sun and where you can easily get water to your plants. Try not to go any further than you can reach with your water hose - that makes watering a lot easier than having to carry heavy buckets of water to the teepee. You need to find an area that is around 6 feet by 6 feet. Now that you have a site picked out, we need to get it ready to plant. Remove all existing grass, weeds, rocks, and trash from the site. Add 6 inches of compost to the area, and till (or mix) it into the soil. Next, we need to make sure the grass doesn't grow back into the area that we've cleaned off. Place bricks, stones, cinder blocks, or some other solid material along the edges of the garden bed. You can take a 2 to 3 foot wide strip of landscape fabric and lay all around the edges of the garden. Cover the fabric with bark mulch. This will help to keep the weeds out of your teepee area and will give you a dry walking and standing area where you can weed and water the teepee. You might also put the landscape fabric indsie the teepee to have a clean place to sit.



Garden TeePee - for Beans and Squash

You will need to get 6 10-foot poles (cedar posts, pipe, lumber, or bamboo).

Tie the poles together 6 inches from the top with weather proof cording or wire.

Put the base of the poles one foot inside the edge of the garden.

Wind the string around and between each pole, leaving an opening between 2 poles. (If you don't leave an opening, you won't be able to get inside!)

Now comes the planting part! Plant bean seeds at the base of each pole.

As the vine grows, train them to grow around the poles and the string.

You will need to give them some extra support by tying the vines to the poles - not too tight though!

In around 6 to 8 weeks, your teepee should be fully covered.

That all depends on what kind of bean or vine you use to cover the teepee and how well you keep the plants watered.

Make sure to check for weeds too. Weeds can steal water from the beans, so make sure you pull them out.

You can use hyacinth bean vine, purple runner beans, or other ornamental vines for your teepee.

Some of the ornamentals would be morning glories, moon vine, ornamental gourds, or clematis.

Have fun making your teepee, watching it grow, and playing inside it!