Sturdy Garden Trellis Ideas You Can Make Yourself
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A good sturdy garden trellis is a great treasure in the garden. Check out these trellises you can make at home with what you might already have. And get started with beginning gardening here too.
Garden trellis can cost a lot and some of them just fall apart anyway. If you want a trellis that will last for years to come, my favorite kind is a cattle panel trellis. I have had them in our preschool garden for 8 years now. We have had to replace the zip ties twice, but they still stand strong all growing season long every year.
The kind of trellis you decide to make depends on your budget, tools, skills, and what you can haul home. I was fortunate enough to have help getting my cattle panels home.
Trellis can help support vining vegetables that can’t grow on the ground, but it can also help you grow more food in small spaces.
Cattle panel trellis
Cattle panels come in 16-foot lengths so they are difficult to transport. If you want to drive them home whole and you have a truck, you can just bend them inside the bed of the truck in an arch and they will travel perfectly.
If you don’t want to bend them, you might be able to find a store that will cut them for you, or you can cut them in the parking lot. The last time I got some, my friend picked them up in his truck. I called ahead and asked the store to cut them in half and load them for him. They didn’t mind at all. You can either cut them with a saws-all or large bolt cutters.
If you want directions on how to make them, check this link for the directions.
String trellis
Another great trellis that works great, especially for tomatoes is a string trellis. You will have to replace the string yearly, but the t-posts will be there year after year and can easily be moved to another area of the garden for crop rotation.
Set a t-post at each end of the row. Once the plants begin to grow, wind some garden jute back and forth between the plants, making sure to keep it tight. Then go around the t-post and make another pass back in the opposite direction. This holds the tomatoes without binding them so they get damaged.
The other great benefit to the string trellis is that you can keep making them higher as the plants grow bigger. You can go all the way to the top of the t-post if you need to. String trellis is great for more than just tomatoes, you can string any plant up that way.
Using what you already have around the house is the best way to make your trellis. Check out this SUPER cute trellis made from an old screen door!
Wire mesh trellis
Wire mesh is a great material to build a trellis with. Here are some simple instructions to build a wire mesh trellis for your vegetable garden.
Chicken wire trellis
Running chicken wire on a series of posts makes a great trellis for tomatoes or any kind of plant. Check out how to make a chicken wire trellis here.
Pyramid trellis
This a-frame or pyramid trellis is great for growing vines in the garden. Check out how easy it is to make.
Willow trellis
In addition, willow can be used in a variety of ways such as in making this willow cone. You could make a large one and use it as a tomato cage or other type of trellis as well.
Cucumber trellis ideas
My favorite cucumber trellis is the cattle panel one. You could also augment this idea and set your t-posts at an angle then place your cattle panel on top of it. Then you could grow your cucumbers, squash, or melons up the angle. It would work great for peas and pole beans as well.
The string trellis would work for cucumbers also.
I use the 4-foot trellis height for cucumbers and it’s always worked great for me. I let my cucumbers grow up one side and down the other, so I get 8 feet of growing space for them.
Tomato trellis ideas
Tomatoes grow great in the cattle panel trellis cages I have shown above. You can also build them with four sides instead of three. Tomato cages are never big enough or sturdy enough to hold tomatoes in my experience.
I also love the string trellis method for tomatoes. You can build a trellis out of whatever you have around. Look and see what you might have that plants can climb on and build your own unique garden trellis for your garden.
I hope one of these trellis ideas will meet your garden needs and you can find something you have already to make it with. Saving money in the garden is my biggest goal, check out these ideas on how to save even more.
Check out these basics for the garden:
