Build Your Own Trellis, It’s Easy

I think Spring is here. I’m getting the garden ready to plant some warm season crops. That involves setting up trellises for beans, cucumbers and other vining crops.

I love to grow vining plants. By growing up instead of out, they can save a lot of space in the garden. Boring plant breeders who hate fun have developed bush varieties of many vegetables that don’t require trellis – bush beans, bush cucumbers, and the like. I’m sure these plant breeders paint all their rooms white and eat steak with ketchup. They are the same ones who brought us “tame” jalapeños and yellow zucchini. They should be bullied and shamed. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Don’t be like these people.

Instead, enjoy life by building a trellis and growing some vines.

Trellis adds an element of architecture to your garden. You can use them to create shaded walkways and “rooms” in the garden.

There are as many ways to build a trellis as there are materials to build one out of. One of my favorites is the arched walkway.

It’s super-easy to construct. All you need to make one section of an arch are four t-posts and a standard 16-foot cattle panel. Set two of the tposts four feet apart in a row. Space another row of two t-posts five feet away. Stand the cattle panel on end on the inside of one row. Bend the cattle panel into an arch and use the other row of t-posts to “capture” it. Then you can use bungee cords, zip ties or short pieces of metal wire to secure the cattle panel to the posts.

You can make the arch longer by adding more posts and more cattle panels.

I built one arch section a few weeks ago when I planted some peas. A few years ago I grew “Kentucky Wonder” green beans on both sides of an arch like this. The tendrils grew all the way across the top. It made picking the green beans on top real easy – they just hung there right before your eyes.

This type of arch is perfect for growing cucumbers and gourds. You can also grow indeterminate tomatoes up and arch like this, but you’ll need to tie the stems to the panel in places since tomatoes don’t have tendrils like other vining plants.