I want to share with you my plans for making a homemade trellis. I have talked a lot on my blog about my cucumber trellis and my squash taking over the cucumber trellis. I have given a little information, here and there, but not enough to fully understand what I did. Here is a great picture showing how I start off. I am using tomato ladders purchased from Gardeners Supply. They are stacked three sections high reaching approximately six feet high. They come in red and green. You can see from the picture that I mixed the colors when I attached them together. They have the shape of a triangle with an open end, three vertical rods joined with horizontal cross-supports.
Making a Homemade Trellis from Tomato Ladders
I like these tomato ladders because they are made out of strong metal. They have three prongs that go into the ground giving them a lot of stability. I place several tall tomato ladders somewhat close together with their opening in the triangle pointing in different directions. Sometimes I include some that are stacked only 2 high to provide more growing area as the plants are beginning to grow. Then I put growing stakes across the cross supports of the tomato ladders. These are for the plants to attach to creating a wonderful homemade trellis. In this picture I used wooden stakes and also the green plastic-covered metal stakes. You can see the stakes sitting horizontally on the cross supports of the ladders.
Then I plant lots of cucumber seeds around the bottom of these tomato ladders. As they grow I encourage them to grow up the trellis. This means that I move the plants onto the trellis and eventually they attach on and grow up the trellis. The cucumber plants look like a cucumber tree! This year I am going to create several of these homemade trellises in my garden. They will be used for the Tahitian Melon Squash because they are so vigorous and productive. This will provide some vertical growing space. This is so they will grow up instead of out of my garden and all over the yard!
Below is a picture of tomato ladders being used for tomatoes which I don’t advocate. I use them to create trellises. For more information or to order click on the picture.
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