How to Make and Use Trellises in the Garden
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By Jenny Underwood Trellises have been around for a very long time; we have yet to learn when they first appeared on the gardening scene. So what are trellises, their purpose, and how do you implement them in your garden?
What are trellises?
Basically, a trellis is any supportive device for a plant to grow on. It can be wood, metal, stone, or any material suitable for gardening. In a book from historic Williamsburg, they talk about the colonists growing copses of saplings for the specific purpose of making trellises in their gardens.
How to build trellises.
To build a trellis, decide if you need a yearly or permanent support system. You will want a permanent trellis for items such as berries, grapes, roses, or vines. My favorite is a split rail fence. To build a split rail fence, you will need small, straight trees cut about 6 to 8 feet long. Using a wedge, split the logs into quarters. Dig holes to set your posts in. Make sure they are deep enough to be sturdy. Attach the split rails by screwing long screws into the rail and the posts. Optionally, you can bore through the posts with a Sawzall and slide the split rails into these cavities. Build your rail fences from rot-resistant wood such as cedar, oak, Osage orange, cypress, black locust, black cherry, black walnut, and sassafras.
A cattle panel can be used for an arch.
For garden fencing that you’ll be pulling down and resetting each year, I recommend cattle panel trellises, cane or wooden teepees, or wooden cages. To build a cattle panel trellis, you have several options. First, you need to consider how tall your plants need to climb. For shorter things like peas, you can set metal posts and fasten the cattle panels with the 4-foot side running vertically and the 16-foot side going horizontally. Place your posts every 4 feet for optimal support.
For taller vegetables such as indeterminate tomatoes, it’s best to run a post every 4 feet but place your cattle panel in an arch. How wide you arch it is up to you, but allow for plenty of airflow. Only plant on one side of each side of the arch. Don’t double plant the same thing, or you run the risk of diseases and fungus. Attach your plants to the panels with special clips, twine, or cable ties. After harvest, take down your panels and clean them up before storage. These last forever but are more expensive than other options and can be difficult to remove each fall.
Another way to make a trellis out cattle panels.
Another option for plants such as pole beans or cucumbers is teepees. We build ours from straight river cane or saplings that are approximately 1 inch in diameter. Chop all branches off and sharpen one end. Using a heavy hammer, drive three poles in a circle. How big you make the circle depends on your space. For example, our circles are about 1 to 2 feet in diameter in our raised beds, while in our conventional garden, our circles for pole beans were 5 feet across. Gather all three poles together at the tops and wire or cable tie together (twine also works). Now, you can fasten smaller sticks between the poles as you’re going up (like a ladder) or wind twine between the poles for climbing support.
Often, we can salvage our teepees for the next season by removing them after harvest and storing them in a location with plenty of airflow. You can also leave them in the ground if you aren’t disturbing that spot next season (such as for raised beds). These are excellent free options for trellising. The downside is they often break off in the ground when you are removing them in the fall, and while they can still be reused, they will be shorter.
To build wooden cages, you will need smaller wood strips (such as 1″x1″x12″) and larger wood strips (2″x2″x6′). You will use four long strips and four short strips every foot. Build each side by laying two long strips down even with each other, 1 foot apart. Then screw or use an air nailer to attach the small strips to the long strips on both sides at every foot. Then attach all four sides to form a large rectangular box. It also helps to sharpen the bottoms of the larger strips so you can more easily seat them in the ground. These are excellent, sturdy options for large plants like tomatoes, but they have some downsides. They can be more expensive to build, hard to store, and heavy. To store them, you will need to ensure they are dry or at least up off the ground and covered with a tarp.
A few other free or low-cost trellises are repurposed pallets, natural stone walls or fences, old buildings, or even plants such as sunflowers or corn. Many plants — such as tomatoes, pole beans, peas, cucumbers, and vertically grown squash — benefit from a sturdy, durable trellising system, so experiment this year and find out what works best for you!
Originally published in the March/April 2023 issue of Countryside and Small Stock Journal and regularly vetted for accuracy