Day 15: Trellising

This post represents DAY 15 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 15: Trellising

Today marked the {almost} completion of the construction of our garden. It began with a trip to the local hardware store to purchase the following:

- Six 6' u-post fence posts

They look like this on one side and...

Like this on the other side

- Two of the shortest u-post fence posts we could find -  I can't remember the exact measurement... it's not too important - you'll see.
- 50lb test fishing line {found this at WalMart}
Cost: $40

We also brought with us our trellising material from The Garden Master, a wooden mallet, and scissors.

I didn't take the time to take pictures during our installation of the trellis... So, I'm going to have to illustrate how we decided to make our trellis work with completed pictures which will make things somewhat anticlimactic because you will see the finished product way before the end but whatever...

We started by driving the 6' fence posts into the ground. We place two on each end of the 8' side of the garden and then place one post in between each of those. We then placed the two smaller fence posts in the center of the 4' side of the garden. Rather than trying to drive the posts through the weed barrier - we just placed them outside the barrier - this can only be a good thing because it gives our plants extra growing space on the trellis - right?

Next, we measured and cut the trellis material to fit our garden. I can't give you measurements because we just used our magic powers to pretend like the trellis material was attached to the posts to figure out where to cut. Your garden measurements will probably be different. This was definitely a two-person job. We cut three long pieces to go from one 8' side of the garden to the other. I think the pictures illustrate what we did better than my words can.... 

I drew the red line along the edge of the trellising material to indicate that it is one piece from one side of the garden to the other.

After we had our three beautiful pieces of trellis material cut we started fish stringing... We attached fish string to one of the green poles and then weaved it through the trellising material, over under over under over under etc. This picture shows two strings - however we started with one string on each side to get everything in place - later we went through and added another line to help make it stronger. You can't tell that the fishing string is weaved through the material in the picture - but it is - not sure yet if that makes any sort of difference but we felt like it did when we were doing it so we followed our feelings.

Once we had the fishing string holding the trellis material up on both sides we added the line down the center of the garden. This part was super easy - just tie fishing line to one of the short fence posts - through the other end of the fishing line to your helper on the other side and have them tie it to the other post as tight as they can. We did not do any sort of weaving for this part.

You can see that it does a great job holding the trellising material down.

Once we had the trellising material contained life felt much more under control. We finished by running another line of fishing string along the tops of each side of the trellising and by tying the 3 pieces of trellising together at the tops - eventually we will buy some zip ties and fasten them together properly and we may add additional lines of fishing string. We are crossing our fingers that 50lb test is strong enough. We'll definitely let you know if it's not... 

And now - the anticlimactic presentation of the final product {that you have already seen during this entire post - bah.}

Now we just need our plants to get big enough that we can start training them to grow on the beautiful trellis we made them.

FYI - when the plants that we train onto the trellis grow big things like watermelons and cantaloupes and large zucchinis we will support the produce w/ cutup ladies nylons... Haha!

As always - let me know if you have any questions about any of the above - or anything else!