Because of where I live, I always try to grow vertically as much as I can to give me more space to grow more veggies. Pole beans and snap peas are the easiest things to grow on trellises.
A couple of years ago, the hubby got some very large broom poles that he had picked out of the trash at some construction site. He drives a concrete truck and is always at construction sites. The stuff that these people throw away is amazing. We have got so much wood for the garden beds and such for free.
Anyway, he used these poles to make me a pole bean trellis. It was nice. I added some twine to it to have more bean plants going up it. Harvesting the beans at the top was interesting though lol. I had to drag out my kitchen three step ladder and that wasn't even big enough. The poles ended up snapping off in the ground. The wet soil kinda rotted out the poles.
Last year the hubby and Matt made me a new bean pole trellis. It is even taller, I need to drag out my hubby's huge step ladder to get the beans off the top. This one is made out of thin trees from the forest area behind our house.
We used pvc pipe to make a couple of snap pea trellises. I add either twine or trellis netting to them so that the pea vines have something to grab a hold of. I had tons of snap peas last year. I would eat them as I harvest them, snack on them instead of chips and then gave a bunch away.
The trellis in the front has twine and the one in the back has the netting. The netting lasts longer, a couple of years, but both trellises have to have the netting replaced this year. We had 8 feet or so snow in this bed this past winter, way over the tops of these two. These are about 5 feet tall.
Tons of flowers and tons of vines. I had to attach some of the broom poles from the old bean pole trellis to the snap pea trellis to keep it from falling over. When it was full of the fruit, it got very heavy.
This year we are planting some sunflowers again to use for seed snacking and for the cucumbers to climb up. It supposedly makes the cucumbers sweeter to plant them next to sunflowers.
I have a couple of other ideas for way to get the small watermelons and cantaloupes off the ground too. I am just hoping we have the time and resources to make them.
This is the same problem I have with trellising, I am in a wheel chair so I can't climb ladders. I do as much trellising as I can for space but have to limit their height. I never heard growing cucumber with sunflowers makes them sweeter I'm going to try that this year. Thanks for the tip.
ReplyDelete