A Sampling of Trelli from Repurposed Materials

With the last of the garden finally planted, this last weekend we could turn our attention to the next step in vegetable cultivation: trellising.  (Some would say that should be done concurrently with setting out plants, but that happened to be outside our time budget this spring since we didn't have them built yet!)  We've got tomatoes, pole beans, and cucumbers that need support, and we're testing out a variety of trellis designs this year to see what works best (and based largely on what we could find in our garage and yard).  A fun exercise as you scroll through is to try and figure out which designs Katie likes.  (Hint: it's not all of them.)

Two quick side notes: in case you were wondering, 'trelli' is not the accepted plural form of 'trellis.'  That would be 'trellises,' which is much less fun to say.  Also, we learned a while back that an unconventional collection of styles can be referred to as 'Bohemian' if you want to impress your visitors.  So, let's take a look at our Bohemian collection of trelli!

First up: tomatoes.  We made this one out of cedar fence pickets ripped in half on the table saw.  Once we had the design in mind, it only took about an hour to build.  The sides are surprisingly sturdy for being built out of 1/2" cedar pickets eroded to significantly less than that in places and held together by only one screw at each juncture.

One thing we noticed, though, was that just leaning against each other, the sides were prone to sliding and falling over, even in our not-very-windy yard.  So we took some scrap pieces of wood, pounded them in near the corner feet of the trellis as stakes, and screwed them to the trellis.

Also, taking some more wood scraps and jamming them in the top gives some more friction to keep the sides from sliding against each other.

After the first trellis, however, we ran out of cedar fence pickets.  So we ripped a few pieces of six-foot 2 x 6 into 3/4" by 1-1/2" strips and screwed them to stakes for the remaining tomato beds.  We can add additional boards/sticks across them as necessary when the tomatoes get larger.  Also, there are a few isolated tomato plants (not shown) we have stuck in the ground or containers here and there, for which we're still using the last few of our wire tomato cages (until they get too bent up to be useful).

Second, the beans: we have three hills, one hill of Scarlet Runner beans, and two of Kentucky Wonder.  For one hill (the scarlet runners), we have a UFO-on-a-stick.

It's actually a slightly-bent bike wheel attached to the post with a piece of 5/16" all-thread with a bike axle nut on top. 

Wires run down to sticks in the ground for the beans to climb up.

A second hill of beans has a tripod of 3/4" x 1-1/2" x 7' posts (also ripped from 2 x 6's).

They're held together by a piece of 1 x 12 with 1-1/2" holes drilled through it with a hole saw.  No screws in there, everything held in place by friction (so far).  We'll update the post if it ends up not being stable like this.

The third hill of beans has a section of woven wire fencing arcing through about 300° of a circle, and held in place by a stick driven into the ground on either end.  The theory is that leaving 60° of the circle will allow us to pick both the inside and outside; we'll update the post if that turns out to be too small.  The fencing is cut so as to leave a piece of wire at the end that wraps around the stick.  This model only took about 15 minutes to build, including finding the sticks!

The cukes get the same type of trellis as the third hill of beans.

What do you use for vegetable trellises?  Do you get them out when you first plant the garden?  Which ones do you think Katie liked?  Let us know in the comments section below!