Here's a picture of the trellis I mentioned in earlier posts. Currently we are growing snow peas on it. For some reason, the pea vines fell to the ground during the cold snap, and it's hard to retrain them back up it without breaking the vines. They're beginning to produce peas, though. There were nasturtiums bordering the raised bed, but the frost wiped most of them out.  We are using the center of the "tent" as a composting area for kitchen waste and leaves.

This bed did very well the first year we started it as an experiment with "lasagna gardening". We put down layers of newspaper, alfalfa, hay, and composted mulch, sprinkling bone meal and blood meal on each layer, and planted seedlings we'd started in peat pots. (Seeds won't work so well with this kind of garden as you can't control the planting depth.) It didn't do so well last year...I had no luck with the yard long beans I attempted to grow in the summer.

We took one class from the Phoenix Permaculture Guild in which the instructor suggested using trees as a part of a food garden design, because most vegetables can benefit from some shade here in our ridiculously hot summers. However, I've been to classes since then where the instructors disagree with that idea, and since the bed hasn't done so well lately, we removed a couple of limbs from the lemon tree in an attempt to give the area more light.