Trellises: Beautiful and Interesting Space Savers
July 6, 2010

Garden trellises are great tools to add beauty, interest, focal points and definition to your garden. Most importantly, they are valuable space savers for intensively planted vegetable gardens. Vegetables that vine and sprawl in the garden like squashes, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, and peas can take up quite a lot of space.

Training the vines and branches

• Allows more soil surface to plant more veggies
• Lifts the vines and leaves off the moist soil saving your veggies from rot and fungus
• Makes finding the fruits a lot easier to harvest

There are many different types of beautiful premade trellises. These can get expensive. Luckily they are fairly easy to make. Remember to anchor them well or you may find that the heavy vines bring your trellis down especially in a strong wind.

Construction Materials

Heavy vegetable fruits like tomatoes and winter squashes require sturdy construction materials but peas and beans can use lighter materials. When looking for materials let your creativity run free. Just about any material can be used as a trellis. Old railings, chicken wire held in place by bamboo stakes, and older ladders are good examples.

Typical construction materials:

Common Trellises

Tepee
Fence Trellis
Ladder Trellis

Training the vines and branches

Set your trellis in place while the plants are still young and small to avoid damaging their root systems and breaking the vines or branches of older larger plants. Many plants will take to the trellis naturally like beans and peas but others will need to be encouraged. Once your trellis is in place and the plants are tall enough, start training and even trimming extra branches. The vines and branches while they are still tender can be weaved through netting or the rungs of a ladder type trellis or horizontal rods or slats of fence trellises.

Use soft stretchy material strips to fasten the sturdier vines and branches to the trellis. T-shirt strips and old panty hose work well. Tie the strip around the trellis tightly then loosely tie the plant to the trellis.