Building a Free and Natural Garden Support Trellis
Looking for a natural and completely free way to support your peppers, peas or green beans? This quick garden support trellis is beautiful, easy and sturdy.
Sometimes you have plants that get out of control and want to sprawl everywhere. When you are square foot gardening, there simply isn’t space for plants to take up more room than planned. We’ve had a cold and wet spring, which means the peas are growing like weeds.
You can see here from about a week ago, that my peas were already tall and needed a back support. I went ahead and got some ornamental yard fencing to help keep them upright. Leading up to the peas are rows of carrots, Swiss chard and onions. Right behind the peas are a bunch of tomato plants. So, not a lot of space for them to get wild (which is always the case with square foot gardening!)
But after another week, they nearly doubled in height and were flopping forward onto the carrots, Swiss Chard, and onions. I didn’t want to buy more support fencing because that stuff gets pricey fast. Plus, the gate I had was working, but not tall enough.
Instead, I used long, strong and slender sticks (especially the curved ones), and built this all-natural and completely free support. Not only does it work perfectly, but it is really pretty and woodsy too.
Simply look for long sticks that are between the size of a pencil and a marker in width. Carefully push them into the ground in between rows so you don’t disturb any roots.
I started with the longest and most curved ones so they were actually going across the plants first. Then I used the straighter sticks and positioned them so they were holding the first sticks in place with a kind of basket weave (inside and then outside).
Many sticks went in at an angle to help hold up the plants with a kind of x shape. This is very sturdy, won’t block any sunlight and the plants can grow around it.
These are perfect and very timely!